On Friday, March 24th and Saturday, March 25th, the Farmingdale Playcrafters performed their rendition of We Live Here, a play written by Zoe Kazan.The show was directed by Playcrafter alumnus Mrs. Gina Pantina. Believe me when I say this, it was nothing short of spectacular.

The play opened on a broken family on the week that their oldest daughter Ali, portrayed by senior Julia Kramer, was getting married to her short-term boyfriend Sandy, played by senior Dylan Zubaria. The youngest daughter Dinah, senior Emily Missbach, arrives home to find that her mother Maggie and father Larry, seniors Brianna Gilmore and Thomas Sclafani, have not changed much while she was away studying at Juilliard, and everyone was stressed about the upcoming wedding. Dinah invites a ghost from the family’s past to attend the wedding with her, and that is when chaos ensues and old memories arise. The audience learns throughout the course of the play that Ali had a twin sister, Andy, who committed suicide while they were just teenagers, and the family hardly ever talks about Andy; her room sits untouched from how she left it.

The main cause of conflict in the story is Andy’s ex-boyfriend and Dinah’s new flame, Dan, played by sophomore Vitale Yenzer, who has a complicated history with Ali as well. The family has to deal with the unexpected arrival of Dan, and Ali has to face one of her biggest fears, the guilt she feels over the death of her twin sister. The audience is taken back 14 years during the second half of the show to the night of Andy’s “accident.” There is a revealing scene between a younger version of Ali, played by senior Rebecca Goldberg, and young Dan, who was played by freshman Johnny Doty. It is revealed that Ali and Dan had an affair while Andy hung herself in her room. Ali has been living with the guilt of what she did for years, and all of those emotions are brought back with the arrival of Dan.

Throughout the show, it was apparent that the family was not as close and living as they had once been. By the end of the play, while the immediate family is huddled together, protecting Ali after an accident, the audience got that sense of closeness and love from the family, and there was not a dry eye in the house when Ali finally agreed to talk about her lost twin with her younger sister Dinah. The last line of the play was spoken by Dinah, and showed just a glimmer of hope for the once broken family- “The sun’s about to rise.”

The show meant a lot to the cast and crew involved. “We have all become one big family,” says senior Dylan Zubiria, “It was a perfect way to end my time in Playcrafters.” It is incredible how a group of high schoolers were able to tackle such a heavy show about a serious topic with such maturity and enthusiasm. The passion and love for theatre shown in Playcrafters is truly amazing, and the sense of family and friendship is very strong within the club.Congrats to all involved with We Live Here!