North High based troupe in Scotland for Fringe Fest

Moziah Thomas performs his spoken word piece “Panic.” Photo by Azhae’la

By Azhae’la Hanson, Reporter

Moziah Thomas grew up under the Friday night lights of football at North High School. Now he is thriving under the spotlights of theater. In August, he will go to Edinburgh, Scotland with the Legacy Arts Group to perform an original piece at the world-famous Fringe Festival.

Thomas grew up loving to perform. For most of his life, he used football as an outlet to express himself. Until he entered high school, expressing himself through anything other than sports never appeared as an option for him.

He remembers taking whatever he was going through in life straight to the game and leaving it all out on the field. That was until he joined the Legacy Arts Group at North High.

“I don’t really like to show emotion and tell people my whole story, but in football I could do that.” Thomas said. “And then I joined Legacy Arts and found out that I could do that with spoken word. It was a healthy way for me to express myself and tell my story.”

The Legacy Arts Group, based at North High, is composed of four student performers. Thomas is the only Northsider in the troupe. During his freshman year, on a whim, Thomas took a theater class, a class that became Legacy Arts Group. At the time, he didn’t know the class would change the trajectory of his life. The group was founded in 2019 by dancer, composer, and former North High dance instructor Tamiko French. She has been trying to get the group to the famous festival since its founding. In August, they will finally present their show abroad titled “The Beautiful Ugly.”

Every year, thousands of people across the globe gather in Edinburgh for three weeks as performers and spectators to witness the world's largest arts festival, The Fringe. It showcases a multitude of artistic performances including film, art, and theater.

Thousands of acts have graced the stage since the festival's debut in 1947, so it’s easy to assume that being the first to do something would be a challenging task. However, one group of performers is responsible for two of the festivals ‘firsts’. The Legacy Arts Group is the first group from Minneapolis to attend and is doing so as the first all-black cast to grace the main hall stage.

Moziah Thomas, left, Danielle Roberson, Judah Gardner and Antonio Brooks make up the Legacy Arts Group. Photo by Azae’la Hanson.

This accomplishment was no easy feat, taking nearly three years, the group has survived a pandemic, civil unrest, and the financial obstacle of attending the festival. In fact, the content of the play itself has thrived on it all and they’ve come out on top of those hardships.

It costs about $77,000 to attend the Fringe and the cast and staff worked around the clock to make this happen. Moziah remembers working tirelessly along with his fellow cast members to raise money. They utilized their talents and performed anywhere they could get in to raise money. This included alleyways, galleries, and trips across the state. Now with all of the money raised, the group is proud to say that this opportunity is a self-started and community-funded project.

French herself was also a recipient of this lesson because she had been dreaming of creating her own performance company since she was a North High student.

Today, Thomas stands with his other three cast members, ready to share the honest truth about their stories. The entire content of the production is based on the experiences from its young cast growing up in the city. They use not just their own experiences, but the experiences of their communities to showcase to The Fringe’s national audience.

“My favorite parts of the play come from what emerged when I couldn’t give a voice to the work,” Thomas said. “It made me turn to a bunch of people in my neighborhood to give voice to their experiences. A lot of what you see in the play isn’t just the cast. It’s all of us.”

Their production “The Beautiful Ugly” is an original production written and played by its cast members and also includes their own produced soundtrack. It’s about both the ugly and the beautiful things that happen in the Northside, and in collective experiences of the rest of the cast. It deals with loss, stress, gun violence, the pandemic and navigating those things as a young person.

“We focused on the ugly things that have made us feel and we created beautiful things with songs inside the same poems inside the scene,” Thomas said.

The legacy they hope to leave behind is bigger than making an appearance at Fringe, it’s making an appearance in the community, to be known, be loved in their own backyard of the Northside, and truly leaving a legacy of opportunities for youth to express themselves for many generations to come.