More than 100 people were in attendance March 22 for the opening night of the Southern Miss Theatre Department’s showing of “Bulrusher.”

Sophomore English major Olivia Saldana enjoyed the play thoroughly, despite being surprised at the racy content.

“I like it still. It doesn’t take away from the humor or the quality,” Saldana said.

“A lot of high points it brings up is the comparison that you can draw from it for modern day issues, especially with the Black Lives Matter movement and also with more LGBT people since you can see a same-love relationship between two characters,” junior English major Case Jefcoat said.

The cast of six became like family fairly quickly according to senior performance major Aaron Brusher.

“[Being in a small cast] is scary first because you’re are always afraid someone won’t like you. In a big group, you go undetected.” Brasher said.

“At first, I think we were all a little hesitant, but just like in the show, where we are becoming a family, behind the scenes we became a family. It was great to know that no matter what happened, I would have my cast mates looking out for me,” Brasher said.

Brasher also said he loves the interplay between characters. “I always tell everyone they need to see the show twice to see everyone’s relationships. On the surface, you don’t see it because the story has a lot of twists and turns,” he said.

Caleb Armstrong is a senior theatre major and one of the two assistant stage managers for Bulrusher. He said that his job is obviously to assist the stage manager, but he went into the details of the process by explaining that everything has to go through the stage management team.

“This is my first time stage managing. I normally act, which is the foundation of what I do, but I love everything about theatre. I try to learn about every aspect I can,” Armstrong said.

Armstrong said that there were scary moments during rehearsal due to the fight scene in the play. “They would run through it before practice and before each show to make sure that everything was smooth. We said that it was scary watching them fall and they could not do it incorrectly without possibly getting hurt.”

“Bulrusher” will continue to play at 7:30 p.m. March 27 and 28 at Hartwig Theatre.