Students at Waynesburg University have the chance to create their own theatre performance. Those performances will come to life April 11 at the Goodwin Performing Arts Center, when three one-act plays will “hit the stage.”

Junior Rachael Crosbie, sophomore Tre’ Thomas and senior Shawn White are the writers and the directors of these one-acts.

White’s play is called “All of this,” and is about a family struggling with the suicide of their son. Thomas’ is titled “The Garage.” It is about a daughter trying to learn more about her father.

Crosbie, an English literature major and theatre minor, has never directed before but is familiar with one-acts. She got her first college acting experience in a one-act play titled “Almost Me,” and since has continued working with one-acts, as well as other Waynesburg theatre productions.  One thing that Crosbie enjoys about theatre, both as an actress and director, are the characters.

“I just really like being something different than who I am, and just trying to understand the characters and the motives as a writer interests me a lot,” Crosbie said. “Just to understand the developed motives and understanding certain characters and why they do what they do [is intriguing].”

Crosbie, Thomas and White all wrote their plays for a playwriting class last spring, taught by Professor of Theatre Edward Powers. Although Crosbie said it wasn’t a requirement of the course for their plays to end up coming to life, all three decided to move forward with them as more than just a class grade.

Crosbie’s one-act, titled “Listen,” is about a man who reveals to his family his battles with depression. Crosbie’s mother suffers from depression, so the issue is a familiar to Crosbie. She would like to see it be addressed more at Waynesburg University. Crosbie’s one-act started as a free write, and she came up with the idea of the character suffering from the condition after she had started writing.

“At some point, I just decided that this character obviously was suffering from depression, and I think that needs to be talked about more on this campus,” Crosbie said. “Especially coming from a character that most likely is seen as [not being depressed].”

Writing the play did not come easy for Crosbie.

“I went through [about] three different versions of the script before I decided I was finally okay with it,” Crosbie said. “It was definitely really hard writing it, but I think whenever I would write another play it would probably be much easier because I had to go through that [experience].”

Crosbie said that the cast has played the characters differently than she has intended, and she sees this as a positive.

“The actors are interpreting the characters a little differently than how I originally intended,” said Crosbie, “and I really like it because it seems like they’re real people other than just written characters.”

Although the one-acts won’t premiere for almost two months, Crosbie can already visualize her work coming to life.

“I just think it’s really cool that it’s something tangible now, something I can see,” Crosbie said. “I’ve always been interested in the idea of having written works being performed. I usually write poetry, and I always wanted to get [into] slam poetry, but I just can’t. So, with scriptwriting, it’s kind of giving me the opportunity to see something performed that I’ve written.”