Upcoming student-written play “The Remnants” is a must-see. LMC students enrolled in a directing course were given the assignment to write a play for the next performance slated for the last two weeks of the Spring semester. This will be the 11th student-written production to be performed at the campus theater.
The students stayed up late working on “The Remnants” as a message about grief and how it transforms not only the self, but the community. Following a fantasy world where characters live amongst ghosts, “The Remnants” highlights the lives we lead after loss.
The ghosts become disgruntled, shaking up the world of the living and causing the characters to go on a journey to reverse the negative aura within their universe. In doing so, they learn lessons about how their reactions to their own grief affect the energy of the ghosts who were once people who were lost. In this reflection, the characters realize that the way they treated themselves after their losses was affecting the ghosts of their past loved ones.
Student Zoe Lewis is the stage manager for this production. Lewis highlighted the responsibilities of stage managing the show, mentioning her role in helping to cast and even help direct the show.
“I’ve done four [shows], so this will be my fifth one,” Lewis said. “Being stage manager, you kind of work with everybody: actors, lights, costumes, set, and sound.”
Director Nick Garcia taught the students directing and writing throughout the course.
“I teach them directing for six weeks, writing for six weeks, and I teach them a writing process. Together — as a full class — we write a two-hour show in under a week, and then we cast it and start rehearsing it immediately,” Garcia said.
The central themes of “The Remnants” are grief, healing, and found family. Garcia shared that throughout the journey, the characters start to see family within each other and heal their grief in the process.
“In doing so, they’re able to heal each other — and then they’re able to heal everyone else — and to free themselves of the past so that they can live in the moment, which is what their families and the ghosts wanted them to do in the first place,” Garcia said.
The students, currently rehearsing, will have a total of two weeks to get ready for this show, with the closing and strike happening during the week of final.
