“Play It Straight,” a new play that opens on Oct. 15 at Cosumnes River College under the direction of Anthony D’Juan, a Sacramento playwright and director.

The script has been in the works for four years and was created by local playwrights Richard Winters, Kerri Yund, and Gary Wright, D’Juan just recently got the play a couple of months ago.

Last year D’Juan was also a part of another performance at the Black Box Theater with Sacramento artist Carla Fleming, who’d performed her album about domestic abuse.

The play is about a high school theater class production of “Romeo and Juliet” that gets turned upside down due to culture wars.

“We want to be able to move past some of the old ways that don’t function well with the society that we have today,” D’Juan said. “The boomers have been running everything and I, as Gen Z, want to adapt.”

D’Juan is taking steps to make his actors feel more comfortable and is trying to move away from traditional theater rehearsals.

This means that if the actors want to instead bring a tablet or digital device to rehearsals rather than the physical script, they can.

“Working with Anthony is great because he lets you bring whatever you want to the play while also keeping you on the path that feels the most honest to the script,” said Audrey Di Paolo, a 21-year-old theater major.

Hope Sturn is one of the main characters in the production. Sturn plays the role of the drama teacher’s assistant and faces hardships, such as not belonging and losing one’s place of safety.

It is through these showings of hardships that the play gets its message to its viewers. Said Salem Benner, a 19-year-old undecided major.

“Sometimes you have to be unapologetically you and see what happens,” said Benner

With rehearsals soon coming to an end, the actors are all working towards the blocking of the show and how they use their movements to portray their respective characters.

The play will run from Oct. 15 through Oct. 19 in the Black Box Theater. Get tickets here.

“I like to do theater for people who don’t like theater. That’s my target audience,” D’Juan said. “I do it because that’s the most honest audience you’ll get.”