PTC premieres “Everybody”

By Emma Robinson, Co-Editor-In-Chief

Post Theatre Company (PTC) debuted the first show of the season on Friday, Oct. 8. “Everybody” written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and directed by Galia Backal, featured nine performers pondering the question many have: what happens when we die?

Sophomore musical theatre major Ren Mummert was excited to play the character Love in “Everybody”, and said that the show was one of the best experiences of their life.

“Everybody is about your journey through life and at the end of it, what you get to take with you when you die,” Mummert said. “It’s a beautiful satirical look at the way people live their lives. It also makes you question the way you treat yourself and other people and why you do. At the end of the day, no one escapes death. All you are left with are the good and bad things that you gave to this world. I’m so grateful for this show because everyone in this show is so interconnected, I made some of the best friends that I’ve had in a while through this show. We truly bared our souls to each other and we are connected in a way that is so meaningful that I think we will always remember each other with the utmost respect.”

Due to social distancing protocols during the pandemic, Mummert had never experienced an in-person performance with PTC.

“I went into theatre because I love nothing more than affecting an audience and feeling the physical energy in the room shift throughout the course of the show. That is something virtual theatre can simply never match,” they said. “To be on a stage again in the lights and without a mask on (tested and vaccinated) was surreal. It made me remember why I love what I do so much.”

While “Everybody” had four cast members with permanent roles in the show, five students played “somebodies”. The “somebodies” played a different role in each show, and had to memorize the entire script. 

“It was really stressful and hectic to memorize almost the entire script,” junior musical theatre major Hannah Winston said. “But it was interesting to get different roles each night. It was so surreal to see how unexpected life and death is because we weren’t able to plan which role we were going to play. It made our roles so much more real to us because we weren’t really playing people. We wanted the audience to be able to see themselves in the characters. Seeing how each actor played each different character was important to show the true meaning of “Everybody”.”

While Winston enjoyed all of the characters she played, the character Everybody has a special place in her heart.

“As terrifying as it was, I felt like I personally could play Everybody how I wanted to. It was me talking, I was the vessel for the content,” she said. “It was different in me than any other cast member playing Everybody. We could connect with that role through ourselves, which is so important in acting.”

Along with the first show of the PTC season, PTC had its first “toast” for the cast and crew members of “Everybody”. Toast is a PTC tradition after the opening night of each production in which the cast and creative team are commemorated for all of their hard work towards the production.

“I felt very happy and celebrated during our toast,” Winston said. “Bringing back live theatre to campus felt very special.”

Mummert agreed.

“It felt so wonderful to be recognized and to be able to recognize the other amazing people who work on our show,” they said. “Sometimes, the tech crew doesn’t get as much limelight as they deserve, and it’s so important that we take that time to celebrate them. It also felt like a celebration of rebirth. Theatre had just come back after what felt like an eternity, we were all rejoicing in what we had once again.”

Follow @liuposttheatrecompany for more information about upcoming productions.