Schimdt led a cast and crew of 25 students. The play went through history from Martha Washington to Jill Biden giving information on the ladies who were lost to history.
Back in 2016, Schmidt had done a similar play by the same playwright on the 44 presidents, so she was excited to come back to a similar play. Especially with the election coming up at the time.
“Two of our alumni were in a professional production of ‘46 Plays’ in the Twin Cities a couple of years ago, which is how I found out about it. I also love directing this kind of show – fast-paced, modern, theatrical, makes you think, has a wide variety of tempos and moods, provides the opportunity to work with a larger cast and to work around schedule conflicts and presents some good challenges for the production team.” said Schmidt on why she chose “46 Plays for America’s First Ladies.”
When working on a play so political in nature there was bound to have many people upset. No matter which side you align with politically there was something that would make you frustrated. Schmidt planned on this, however, and wanted to have these feelings worked into the play.
“With our performance and design choices, we tried to balance the scales to more evenly spread around both satire and appreciation of people from various points on the political spectrum. We added a prologue, and some fun choices such as the bingo cards, to invite the audience to take the show in the spirit it was intended – as a fun way to think about some issues (and people) that perhaps they hadn’t thought of before,” said Schmidt on what aspects could be fixed with the play.
There were many high points in the play according to Schmidt. With the size of the cast being a total of 13, seeing how each of them was able to take their characters and make them their own while still following history and what was written by the play. There was a looming downside while the show went on as one actor unfortunately got sick.
“The actor worked so hard and had been doing such good work, and I just feel bad that they didn’t get to perform and that the rest of us didn’t get the experience of working with them through the performances. However, I’m very proud of how the whole company worked together to make sure the show could go on, especially the actors who stepped in to play the roles that needed to be covered,” said Schmidt on the unfortunate circumstance.
As the play went on the show did very well and had lots of positive comments from most who went to go see the play. As attendance is concerned the show performed as well as they do for most lesser–known plays. To wrap up the play Schmidt had some people she would like to highlight.
“We had several student designers, and a lot of them were doing double-duty, designing alongside either acting or stage management (Alyster Schmidt, Priscilla Muehr, Olivia Houseman and Kayla Browen) and of course, the actors and crew who helped make the show go on when we were missing an actor due to illness (JJ Ostenson and Jules Scarborough) and the folks who helped behind the scenes.”
The SMSU Theater Department plans on having a musical for the spring semester and they will be putting on “Shout: A Mod Musical” on April 9. through April 13. 2025.
