Senior Theatre Major Producing Third Original Production
Image Courtesy of The Catholic University of America
By Anthony Curioso
For the past two years, senior musical theatre major Erin Peters has produced original productions on campus with the help of many of her friends and colleagues. On January 31, 2026, Peters announced on Instagram that she will premiere another one of her original stage works, with a limited run set for April later this semester.
This year, Peters’ newest production is titled Nostalgia. The announcement, posted on an Instagram account dedicated to Peters’ complete collection of original stage works, provided limited details. The post included the performance dates and venue, as well as tagging the respective Instagram accounts for some members of the production team. Nostalgia is currently set to be performed at the Hartke Theatre complex on April 17 and 18.
In addition to Peters’ role as the show’s writer and director, the production team for Nostalgia includes contributions from at least five other students of the CUA Drama Department. Two other performing arts students currently known to be involved in Nostalgia are Mary Stovenour, a junior majoring in theatre, film, and television acting, and Christina Ferentinos, a sophomore majoring in musical theatre. Stovenour has previously acted in both of Peters’ earlier productions. This time, Stovenour and Ferentinos will be joined on the production team for Nostalgia by three freshman musical theatre majors: Allison Payne, Nicholas Hehl, and Parker Scanio.
As mentioned earlier, Nostalgia is the third production written and directed by Peters that will premiere for a CUA audience. This latest production will feature many people who worked on Peters’s earlier ones, and is intended for all staff and students on campus to enjoy.
Two years ago, Peters, a sophomore at the time, began showcasing her original works at CUA through a musical titled Outside the Box. This production was a revised adaptation of a show she had initially premiered in her hometown during the summer of 2022. When Peters premiered the original version of Outside the Box, she shared the following with her hometown area’s local newspaper, East Hanover-Florham Park Life: “I think there’s a lot going on for any high schooler, but once COVID hit, I think it was amplified a lot. Any person you talk to, it’s very discouraging lately. So, I was kind of thinking about how I could represent how I felt in a way that I knew how, because I’ve only ever expressed emotions really through music and through songwriting.”
From the onset of Outside the Box, the main character, Alexa (played by Peters), faces bullying at school. Grant (Zoe Bernabe) finds out that his girlfriend, Kara (Sophie Rivkin Fish), is cheating on him. He decides to get back at her by kissing Alexa. Peter (Jojo Watson) blames Alexa for what happened, which makes her feel like she has no choice but to end her life. After her suicide attempt, Alexa wakes up surrounded by her former bullies, who now appear as monsters. She works to confront her own thoughts and feelings, which are represented by the narrator (Allie MacDonald). In the end, Alexa confronts her painful past and seems to overcome her mental health struggles.
Peters’ second production was a play entitled No, Stay a While. This play, which premiered in April 2025 in the Hartke Theatre complex, features Parker (portrayed by Stovenour), an anxious young woman who seems to struggle in maintaining her relationships, intimate or otherwise, with men named Nick and Will (both portrayed by Daniel Campbell) as well as her friendship with a woman named Amber (Kathryn Caldwell). The journey sees Parker join Nick or Will, sometimes accompanied by Amber, at various points in their lives, reminiscing on the times they have spent together, which can be best described as turbulent. The play also centers on Parker and Nick’s interactions with the security guard and a nurse (both of these also played by Caldwell) at the hospital where Nick has unfortunately found himself following an episode of mental illness from which he ultimately does not recover.
Given the apparent similarities in themes of mental illness between Peters’s previous stage works, Outside the Box and No, Stay a While, it seems likely that Peters may choose to explore the same theme in Nostalgia. While we can only speculate from here, more details will emerge soon as the new show’s premiere approaches. It will also be interesting to see whether Peters and her creative team decide to cast her in the lead role for Nostalgia, as she did for Outside the Box. However, Peters might also choose to not take on the lead, as she did with her second production, No, Stay a While.
Nostalgia will be the second original stage production written by a CUA student to be performed on campus during the 2025-26 academic year. In October, audiences gathered at the Lab Theatre within the Hartke Theatre drama complex to see Please Stand By, a play written by sophomore musical theatre and history double major Faith Moran that told the story of hardworking individuals on both sides of the Second World War. It will be intriguing to see if more students will craft more original productions in the future. For now, students can at least have Peters’s latest production, Nostalgia, to look forward to.
Nostalgia is set to premiere April 17, 2026 at the Hartke Theater.
