The sounds of Bruce Springsteen were their inspiration. The setting was a carnival and the overall theme of the play was losing something. The play itself, however,  was nothing they’d ever done before.

The Repertory Theater  took a chance and decided to perform a student-made play, “Boardwalk Dreams,”, for its annual fall production on Oct. 17 through 21.

“When writing a play it’s easy to fantasize some crazy melodramatic scene of how we’d like stuff to happen,” senior Lauren Mylin said. “Schmidt really worked with us and broke our scenes down. It was cool to see how the most simple dialogue that we talk in was the most real and impactful.”

After the students listened to the chosen Springsteen songs- “Jungleland”, “Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street?”, “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)”, “Thunder Road”, “Meeting Across The River”, “Johnny 99”, “Spirit in the Night” – they were assigned a specific scene to write themselves.

“Schmidt has respected Springsteen’s work for a long time and he came to us with the idea about writing and performing our own scenes,” senior Johnny Tapp said. “We saw the idea as a challenge and we ambitiously attempted to take it on.”

Students spent the summer and first quarter working on the production, carefully planning out each scene.

“They [the scenes] don’t connect to each other as one storyline exactly but that’s another aspect that makes it new and exciting,” Mylin said. “Each scene has its own story … just like each song chosen.”

Along with that, another challenge brought on by having to create each scene’s dialogue.

“There were so many times that we would write a whole interchange and then say it out loud and be like ‘Oh no, that sounds so stupid,’” senior Meagan Holloway. “So we changed the wording of each scene like 20 times.”

However, the challenges paved the way for the student-made play to act as a learning opportunity. It not only gave them the chance to expand their theatrical writing skills but also to work together as a team to produce not only a performance of a show but the show itself as well.

“I think the reason Repertory Theater decided to write their own play is that it’s a different way for us as a class to expand our range as actors and show us a new perspective on something we tend to take for granted-the script and the work that goes into creating a story that makes sense, flows and is actually good,” Holloway said.

Although Springsteen is an idol in the pop culture world, winning 18 Grammy Awards and one Academy Award, along with selling over 65 million albums in the U.S. alone, the specific impact of his lyrics is what drew Rep to really take on the challenge.

“Springsteen wrote some seriously lyrical stuff in his early career so they were easy to choose for inspiration,” senior Alex Peuser said.

While set in a circus, the play never has a constant theme.

“There’s a lot of darker themes, like death, loss, longing, and even some like love,” junior Amanda Miller said. “Springsteen wrote a lot of themes like those in his earlier songs, and we used those as scene inspirations.”

Another benefit of writing and producing their own show was the stronger connection the actors could make with their characters.

“My role represents insecurity which I love because I think anyone can relate,” Mylin said. “My scene is about a broken marriage. It was inspired by the song ‘The Promise.’ Listening to the song at first I found it so different from the others and honestly very sad. Our scene deals with a husband and wife that lost a lot but the worst was losing their son. How raw and difficult it is just makes it that much more interesting to watch and fun to play.”

Although different, the student-made play changed the dynamic of the Repertory Theater program and challenged the students to step up and expand their horizons.

“I really like working with our own show,” Holloway said. “There’s a special type of ownership that we have because we’ve listened to the songs, written the script, cast the scenes, directed and acted together and just worked together from start to finish on a product that is 100 percent ours.”