“Amicus,” an original play written by Communication senior Max Outcalt, premiered Friday and Saturday.
Outcalt wrote “Amicus” in a theatre department playwriting class nearly two years ago. Last spring, he applied for the Wirtz Center’s Student Performance Projects, which allows students to submit their works to be performed in Wirtz throughout the year. His play was selected as a Week Nine Performance Project.
Set in England during and after World War I, “Amicus” follows two university students, Finnegan Givernment and Eli Wellhen, as they navigate falling in love, changing identities and social class issues.
Givernment, Wellhen and their classmates battle with trauma upon returning home from war, producer and Bienen senior Daniel Uglunts said.
Like many of the plays Outcalt has written, “Amicus” explores masculinity, especially when societal pressures make it difficult for men to exhibit anything other than stereotypical male behaviors.
“Whether that’s serving (at) the front and being the loyal Englishman or whether it’s homosexuality in this time and (not revealing) that you’re gay to anyone, those aspects resonate a lot with me, having performed masculinity and not understanding exactly what being a masculine man entails,” Outcalt said.
Outcalt said that although World War I is a high-profile event, it is often overshadowed by World War II and misrepresented in pop culture and movies.
“Amicus” brings attention to the forgotten soldiers struggling with PTSD and mental health struggles in the wake of war, Outcalt said. The play goes a step further and explores the evolution of how war trauma is defined.
“Max plays with what we call PTSD, going from the original term back then of shell shock to how it has shifted over time,” Uglunts said.
Communication freshman Sebastian Gomez, who played Wellhen, said being in “Amicus” offered many opportunities to grow as an actor. Finding the line between acting and seeming realistic was difficult, he said. However, with repetition, he was able to successfully portray the nuances of his role, Gomez said.
“Amicus” was also Gomez’s first experience acting in an original play.
“I (had) no other source material to look at, so a lot of me gets placed into Eli because I’m making the character,” he said. “Eli is a very different person, and I am my own person, but there are parts of me that bleed into him.”
Outcalt said he prioritized cast safety and carefully navigated sensitive topics while writing and directing. The cast worked with an intimacy coordinator, who choreographed all the intimate scenes, he said.
“Amicus” also used a dialect coach, who advised the actors on how to talk with Cockney accents and royal pronunciations, Outcalt said. After this process, Outcalt said it was exciting to see his work truly acted out for the first time.
“I had heard (the show) day one, everyone just reading through but in American accents, so (it was) special to hear it the way that I had envisioned hearing it,” Outcalt said.
The 2026 Winter and Spring Wirtz Student Performance Projects application recently closed. More student-produced plays will be chosen and performed throughout the remainder of the year.
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