By Victoria Staub, A&E Editor
On Friday, April 8 and Saturday, April 9, Lauren Browning ’22 opened her self-written, -directed, and -operated play “Nice Again.” Browning is a political science major with minors in writing and theatre arts. “Nice Again” is the second production she has written and directed at Gettysburg with her first being “A Painted Devil” (2019). Despite being only a minor in theater arts, Browning wished to put on a production similar to a capstone-level production.
“Nice Again” tells the story of a catch-22 relationship where a couple, Brandy (Katie Poliero ’25) and Liam (Blake Dudley ’23), learn that they only get along when they aren’t in a relationship. Browning originally wrote this play while abroad in Lancaster, England for a class titled “Writing for the Stage.” She was inspired by a TikTok for the premise and cites Baron Ryan as the creator of that video. Upon her return to Gettysburg, Browning worked with Professor Chris Kauffman of the Theater Arts Department to make this production an independent study.
This play was a short, sweet, yet bitterly accurate depiction of some relationships that just aren’t right despite it feeling otherwise. Browning and her cast spent a successful nine weeks putting together this production in the blackbox theater, truly demonstrating the ways in which Gettysburg students express their creativity through the use of individualized studies.
