A waddle of “Steel Penguins” will be traveling to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland this summer.

Fifteen Youngstown State University students will be staging the second production ever of the musical “Here There Be Dragons” at the international gathering of performing artists.

“It’s actually happening,” Adam Day Howard, a lecturer of musical theater at YSU, said. “It would be a huge deal to do a big, new musical like this anywhere, but especially at the world’s largest theater festival.”

To give the company a professional veneer, the students will be performing as the Steel Penguin Ensemble.

“I wanted something true to our roots that didn’t sound like a student organization,” Howard said. “So many organizations have named themselves Rust Belt this and Rust Valley that, I wanted to go with strength. Let’s go with ‘Steel’ instead of ‘Rust.'”

“Here There Be Dragons” is a special show to Howard, a Youngstown native who earned his master’s degree at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama after receiving his bachelor’s degree from Kent State University. He was music supervisor and music director for its 2022 Off-Broadway debut at Players Theatre.

“It was my first Off-Broadway credit,” Howard said. “It was a huge boost for me. I probably wouldn’t have gotten the job at YSU if I hadn’t been working Off-Broadway when I interviewed for it.”

He described the musical by Chase O’Neill and Theo Teris as “a quirky, little, fun musical about college kids on the very last night of college who play Dungeons & Dragons and get their sense of reality messed up.”

After it closed Off-Broadway, the writers talked to Howard, who worked on Fringe Festival productions during his studies in Scotland, about taking the show to Edinburgh next.

Last year, Howard took a group of students who covered their own expenses to attend the festival as spectators.

Many students are discouraged from majoring in things like theater. Howard said, “Why go to college to study a hobby?” is something theater majors often hear from family and friends.

Seeing tens of thousands of theater professionals working on such a diverse range of productions was a new experience for those students, who learned that there are many, many options for actors and theater technicians beyond film, television and Broadway stardom.

“It changed all of their preconceptions of what theater is,” Howard said. “You can make your own theater. That doesn’t mean you’re less than. It doesn’t have to be Roger & Hammerstein or Andrew Lloyd Webber to be significant theater.”

That doesn’t mean Fringe shows stay “fringe.” Over the years, the festival has been the launching pad for the percussive musial “Stomp,” still touring worldwide more than 30 years after its Fringe debut; “Fleabag,” Phoebe Waller Bridge’s one-woman show that became an award-winning limited series on Prime Video; and the current Broadway musical hit “Six.”

Cyrus Dzikowski was a psychology major and a musical theater minor when he went to Edinburgh last summer.

“It was a very, for lack of a better term, life changing experience for me personally,” Dzikowski said. “The trip to Scotland last year was the nail in the coffin – ‘Yeah, I want to do both psychology and musical theater. I’m staying an extra year to get my double major. It was such an eye-opening experience to see how much actually goes on in this industry and how many jobs there are for us.”

When the students return this time, their expenses are being covered by an anonymous donor.

Howard said he didn’t know the donor’s identity but, “Somebody dropped some serious cash so our students can do this and not go bankrupt doing it.”

“I cried,” Dzikowski said about learning their expenses would be covered. “I’m very fortunate. I could have covered the cost of the trip a second time, but I know there were issues last year of students who expected to go, but the pricing was so high they had to drop out. It was a big worry with the students who are going this year. For at least half of us, it was a big concern if they could even go on this trip … It’s very heart filling to know there are people who support what we do and love what we do and want us to succeed.”

Howard will reprise his role as music director, and original director Austin Harleson will be back as well. Howard’s wife will serve as assistant director.

The 15 students enrolled in the class and traveling to Edinburgh will record auditions on Wednesday for Harleson, who teaches at Reinhardt University in Georgia. He will cast the 11 roles in “Dragons” and the other students will be swings (actors who can fill in for multiple roles if another cast member is sick or unable to perform) and / or handle props and costumes.

“Hearing that there was a possibility to perform was just amazing,” said Chloe Downey, another YSU student who will be returning to Edinburgh. “It was an inspiration on my writing career, my academic career and just as a person, getting to see everything there. It was amazing.”