This past Tuesday and Wednesday, student auditions were held in the Interpreter’s Theatre for the Department of Communication Studies’ upcoming production of the play “In Real Life.”

The play will run from Oct. 26 through 29 in the Interpreter’s Theatre.  “In Real Life” is an adaptation of a graphic novel of the same name, written by Cory Doctorow and featuring artwork by Jen Wang.  Wang herself will be in attendance for the performance.

The story revolves around 16 year-old Anda, a high school student who, upon moving to a new town, gets involved with an online game called Coarsegold.

Director and theatre performance major Hannah Twitchell described the play and encouraged people to come see it in order to learn more.

“She [Anda] makes some mistakes, learns some lessons, makes some more mistakes,” Twitchell said. “[The novel] gets involved with some more global issues, like gaming and economics.”

Megan Lenstra, a junior and communication theater teaching major, was one of the students who audtioned.

“What I really like about the Interpreter’s Theatre is changing your perspective, and bringing in social issues,” Lenstra said.

While the novel and play do have a serious side, Twitchell said there were a lot of fun aspects to creating an adaption of a graphic novel.

“The art was gorgeous.  It seemed like something that would be really fun to put on stage,” Twitchell said. “There’s fighting and there’s a lot of opportunity for lights and costuming.  All that would work very well in a black box theater.”