David Shopland and Shereen Roushbaiani’s Saving Britney closes July 30 after kickstarting its Off-Broadway run July 6 at SoHo Playhouse, transferring from London’s Old Red Lion Theatre. 

The solo show is inspired by the #FreeBritney movement and follows millennial Jean and her journey of self-discovery through her love of Britney Spears. The nostalgia-filled play tackles celebrity obsession and sexuality.

Saving Britney features performances by Shereen Roushbaiani, a script by Shopland and Roushbaiani, and direction by David Shopland. It is produced by Fake Escape.

Additional works inspired by the Princess of Pop include the jukebox musical Once Upon a One More Time, which had its world premiere in D.C. last year, and & Juliet, which arrives on Broadway October 28 following its North American premiere at Toronto’s Princess of Wales Theatre and previous West End bow. The Broadway-bound musical features multiple songs by Spears, including “…Baby One More Time,” “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet A Woman,” “Stronger,” and more.

Visit SoHoPlayhouse.com.

Since 1947, theatre artists and aficionados alike have traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The Fringe is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, and in commemoration, Playbill is looking back on how a handful of independent theatre companies inspired the largest arts festival in the world.

In the years after World War II, Austrian opera impresario Sir Rudolf Bing created the Edinburgh International Festival with the intention of healing the cultural wounds in the U.K. following the devastation of the war. With a focus on classical music, opera, ballet, and Renaissance drama, the International Festival was, at least initially, designed to appeal to the highbrow tastes of the aristocracy to which Bing himself belonged. The Fringe began, quite literally, ‘on the fringes’ of the International Festival, when eight community and amateur theatre companies from Scotland and England came to Edinburgh without having received the formal invitation. With all of the cities major venues occupied, they took over smaller and more unusual venues on the outskirts of the city, capturing the attention of the assembled audiences with their offbeat and unusual offerings. As the years went on, the idea spread, and soon there were more theatre companies coming uninvited than there were companies that had received an invite!

The Fringe developed into an official organization in 1951, when University of Edinburgh students began to provide food and lodging to the traveling artists. Late night revues and one person productions quickly gained prominence, with many barriers between audience and artist lowered in favor of person-to-person entertainment. As more theatre companies began to show up for the Fringe, both space and time became hot commodities, and venues were soon hosting six or seven different shows per day, from dawn to long after dusk.

The variety of options at the Fringe became one of its calling cards; there was nowhere else in the world where you could take in a one-man show, an improv comedy, a Shakespearean epic, a Victorian melodrama, an original musical, and a modern romantic comedy in the same day, live and in person. International audiences, and artists, began to show up in droves, looking to be a part of the melting pot.

READ: 10 Actors Who Performed at Edinburgh Fringe Before They Were Famous

With many shows offering free tickets, the Fringe was also a gateway for a new generation to fall in love with new forms of theatre. As the Fringe grew, so did the investment of the people of Edinburgh; just about every arts-inclined individual from the area has worked the Fringe at some point in their life, from running box office and back of house to busking on the streets of the capital city.

The Fringe has since grown to overshadow the International Festival with which it originally competed. Edinburgh now recognizes a series of festivals that descend upon the city in August, inspired by the intrepid artistry of the original Fringe companies, and thousands of shows are presented to an ever eager audience. Some, like Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’s SIX, or Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, have gone on to international acclaim. Others instead exist only in the heady mixture of inspiration and aspiration that the Fringe fosters, to be seen once, and remembered for all time.

The festival’s history is one of the many exciting aspects that Playbill writers Margaret Hall and Leah Putnam will be writing about as part of Playbill Goes Fringe, Playbill’s extensive on-the-ground coverage of the festival. Excited to learn more? Check out Playbill Goes Fringe: Meet the Correspondents Who Will Cover the Good, the Bad, and the Weird at Edinburgh Fringe to find out more about how to follow along and “live” the experience with them.

Paul Gordon‘s new musical The Gospel According to Heather holds its first of two performances July 28 at 2:30 PM. Presented by Amas Musical Theatre, in association with Jim Kierstead and Broadway Factor, the workshop will hold a second performance July 29 at 1 PM, with both performances taking that stage at The Pershing Square Signature Center’s Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre.

Following a two-week developmental lab, Rachel Klein directs and choreographs the show which stars Travis Artz (Awesome ’80s Prom), Bradley Dean (Dear Evan Hansen), Badia Farha (School of Rock), Gabriella Green (Fiddler on the Roof national tour), Darron Hayes (Notes From Now), Bryson Jacobi Jackson, Nancy Opel (Into the Woods), Marissa Rosen (Bedbugs The Musical), Adi Roy (Jagged Little Pill), Chloe Gabriella McSwain, and Brittany Nicole Williams (The Prom). 

In The Gospel According to Heather, Heather Krebs wants a boyfriend, but how can she navigate her way through high school if she might be the new Messiah? A small town in Ohio grapples with politics, religion, and teenage romance in the pop musical featuring a book, music, and lyrics by Tony nominee Gordon (Jane Eyre).

The stage manager is Morgan Holbrook. Casting is by Stephanie Klapper Casting.

“I’m delighted to be working with Paul Gordon whose work I have admired for so long,” says Amas Artistic Producer Donna Trinkoff. “The Gospel According to Heather is an offbeat pop musical that raises questions about feelings of ‘otherness’ and the dogma of religion. These are good questions for our time.”

For additional information visit AmasMusical.org.