ISU Theatre’s student directed production “Three Days of Rain” will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and at 2 p.m. Sunday in 2140 Pearson Hall.

Tickets cost $7 for adults and $5 for students at the door and can be purchased with cash or check only.

“Three Days of Rain,” a Richard Greenberg production, has been named as “one of the finest American plays of recent years” by many reviewers and has been performed several times since 1997. 

In 1995, Walker, Ned’s son, returns a year after Ned died to an age-long unused house in New York, where Ned and his partner Theo used to live and work as designers. Upon discovering his father’s journal, which contains clues and hidden truths about his family history, Walker tries to find solutions to these family secrets after he hears Ned’s will with his sister Nan and their friend Pip, Theo’s son.

The play then jumps back to 1960, when stories of a younger Ned and Theo reveal the cloud of secrets from where the journal begins.

With only three performers telling a story between two generations, the show is a completely different style that deviates from traditional ISU Theatre productions. Having such an intimate audience with so few actors in a compact space could provide the audience with a much deeper connection to the actors compared with a show in a larger venue.

The three performers acting as two different characters across two generations means a lot to the actors and actresses in “Three Days of Rain.” 

“It’s pretty challenging being Walker and being Ned,” said Adam Kroksh, junior in performing arts. “They’re completely different people in both their personalities and [the ways] they speak and communicate, particularly working with Ned’s stutter.

“It’s getting very specific and [knowing] where each of these stutters are in a specific sentence. But you can still find the connection between these two [characters] in a certain way throughout all the differences.”

Keegon Jackson, junior in performing arts, plays the roles of Pip and Theo, and also said juggling two different roles is a challenging aspect of the show.

“A big challenge is trying to get the differences between the two,” Jackson said. “When the audience sees that the [performances] in Act One and in Act Two, they actually believe [my characters are] different people, not just [because] we put on different clothes. So I think if we could be able to find those differences, it would also be great for [the] audience.”

Having multiple generations of characters helps uncover the secrets and gives the audience a chance to understand the parents’ relationship to their children and vice versa. 

“It’s certainly about families and how the problems propagate through generations and how we can understand, or really more misunderstand, our parents,” said Taylor Sklenar, senior in chemistry, English and performing arts and director of “Three Days of Rain.”

Sklenar said one of the important parts of the script shows how the characters deal with building their lives and figuring out what their next step is.

“… [A] lot of people in college and around here are trying to build their careers,” Sklenar said. “… That’s what we find [in this play] [with] knowing how to face potential failure and the struggles with that.”

Despite personal struggles and mysterious family secrets, complicated and unexpected relationships within the two generations add more depth to the show. 

“I’m really excited for the audience at the end of the first act to have very strong ideas about what they just saw and make their own truth of the play,” said Noel VanDenBosch, senior in performing arts who plays Nan and Lina. 

For more information about “Three Days of Rain,” visit ISU Theatre’s web page for the show.