Iowa State Theatre put on their first full play of the 2021 theatre season Thursday night, “Corner’s Grove.” The play followed a diverse group of young people as they went through a variety of impactful changes concerning their daily lives.

“Corner’s Grove” is very much set in the real world, with the beginning of the play set in the summer of 2010. The play stayed rooted in its period, with characters using flip phones and making pop-culture references relevant to the time period.

The cast and production staff worked hard to make the entire theatre feel like a part of the scene, with cast members popping out of the crowd before spouting their lines. The stage manager, Heaven Booker, a senior majoring in performing arts, spoke directly to the audience throughout the play and delivered exposition. Booker bridged the gap between the audience and the stage.

At the end of the first act, Booker announced the intermission and incited the audience to stay immersed in the not-so-distant setting by inviting them to step outside and speak during the break, with some theatre enthusiasts taking up the offer.

Towards the end of the performance, the cast exemplified the “the show must go on” spirit when a portable speaker intended to play Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” malfunctioned and instead played nothing. The cast members on stage seemed unfazed by the technical difficulties (leaving one reporter to wonder if the event was scripted) until cast members from behind stage sang out the renowned lyrics. The audience burst into joyous laughter as the show continued, and the characters began dancing to the tune of the unrehearsed chorus.

The lighthearted, whimsical nature of the play contrasted the tough issues the characters faced throughout, paralleling real people’s tendencies to make light of heavy situations. Throughout the play, characters faced many challenges, such as battling substance abuse and the struggle for gender identity.

One of the main characters from the play, Wally Web, played by Alex Harrell, a freshman majoring in performing arts, struggled throughout the show to actualize (it’s) gender identity without being pandered to. Harrell explained how he grappled with portraying such a sensitive role.

“It was a little bit challenging at first trying to get the right feeling for that, especially that one scene where I’m talking about it a lot,” said Harrell. “I talked to some of my friends who identify as non-binary and they helped me immensely. I’ve had my own struggles myself so it’s something that didn’t come easy and it was definitely a tough thing to talk about but having people around me who knew more about it helped a lot.”

Harrell wasn’t the only cast member challenged by a role with serious real-world implications; many of the cast members and their applicable characters struggled with very real problems. One notable example was the character Simon Stimson, played by a senior and performing arts major, Maxfield Coenen. The character Simon Stimson struggled with substance abuse throughout the play.

“I just tried to be as honest as I could, because it’s someone’s actual story,” said Coenen. “It’s personally not my story and I’m ever-grateful that it’s not, but it’s someone’s and I wanted to be aware of that because taking this beyond extreme would just be no fun to see. My family history is rife with a lot of problems concerning substance abuse and I’m always afraid of turning into that so leaning into that fear was helpful for me.”