Written, directed and composed by Charlie Madison ’15, Grace follows the eponymous character, as she attempts to lead a normal life. As detailed online at the Brandeis Theater Company’s website, Grace’s goal is to go shopping, have lunch with her friends, start dating and generally be a typical high school senior. When Grace starts hearing voices, her goals become compromised. The show was part of the Senior Festival and used music and songs to help illustrate its plot.

In an email to the Justice, Madison wrote, “When I started thinking about ideas for my first musical, I had a lot of crazy concepts I was toying with. I wanted to tell a story about North Korea, or a song-cycle about ‘villains in everyday life.’” However, Madison kept returning to the idea of high school students struggling with feelings of isolation and eventually decided on that as his theme for the play.

The play also invokes themes of high school archetypes and coping with mental illness. Madison commented that the play’s central theme is “growing up,” elaborating and writing that “[he] was raised in a wanna-be Friday Night Lights kind of town,” basing many of the characters and events on his own teenage experience. Madison also underscored the play’s more serious theme, writing that “mental [illness] is a serious issue that I feel isn’t addressed nearly enough in theater, let alone musical theater (save for shows like Next to Normal). It was a creative wonder to entertain my audience yet let them inside the mind of someone who must grapple everyday with such a disturbing sense of reality.”

When asked about the show’s message, Madison noted that maintaining relatability and prompting understanding was an important part of the play’s goal.

He wrote “[E]ach person has their own individual baggage they have to carry around each day. … chances are that the person next to you feels the exact same way about themselves too.” Madison stressed the importance of viewers learning to be themselves, writing that the audience “shouldn’t be afraid of letting [their] freak flag fly, putting [themselves] out there.”