Everyone loves an ’80s movie. In the LSU Department of Theatre’s Lab Show “Speech and Debate,” director Amanda Schmidt hopes to channel the great movies of the 1980s in her production.
The play tells the story of three teenagers that get tangled up in a sex scandal involving their drama teacher. Schmidt, a theatre senior, hopes that the audience moves past that to see a quality reminiscent of films such as “The Breakfast Club.”
“It’s not really about the event that started it,” Schmidt said. “It’s about what happened after, and how these three kinds are brought together from it and then how they interact and learn from each other and discover who they are individually.”
In addition, the play uses different multimedia elements throughout the production, including projections and videos.
“Most of the multimedia is in the script, and since we had to have it, we decided to use it,” Schmidt said. “The only multimedia we added was to make a monologue as a blog video as opposed to a podcast.”
In addition to the retro vibe, Schmidt believes the play speaks about the idea of identity.
“What we were playing is the idea of an internal identity versus an external identity,” Schmidt said. “We really wanted to play with how meeting and communicating with other people how those identities change and how they morph together.”
Since starting production on “Speech and Debate,” Schmidt feels her experience has been a challenging, yet fun production.
“This is my first time directing a full-on play,” Schmidt said. “It’s been challenging, but it’s been very rewarding. We have a very good group of people working on this production.”
“Speech and Debate” is running from now until October 11, and is being held at the Music and Dramatic Arts Building on campus.