When librarian Bradley Walton first started writing a new monologue, he had no intention of using it as the spring play.

“Mr.Gibson came on board this year, [and] we were talking about [a] spring play,” Walton said.  “He suggested trying something different and doing a drama. I had not originally envisioned doing that at Harrisonburg High School. I had been doing a children’s play every year for the spring show.”

“Completely Absolutely Normal” was created by Walton, which linked different stories together, all surrounding a central theme of the LGBTQ+ community and its struggles.

“Initially, I was writing a monologue [about] a college freshman that is gay coming out to his father at his father’s grave,” Walton said. “It just seemed like a good idea for a script…His situation was [that] he is agonizing over making the decision to come out to his mother. I wrote a second monologue that was the mother’s response to her son coming out to her.”

As he continued writing and connecting more monologues, he ended up with 12 ten-minute monologues about LGBTQ+ teenagers and their parents. Eventually, Walton was able to trim the story down to a 45 minute one act, revising and cutting out one hour and fifteen minutes of play time.

Sophomore Grayson Campbell participated in last year’s spring play and plans to act in this year’s as well.

“I always want to do the musical. I just haven’t made it so I do the [spring] play as a way to sort of do something. I have always loved acting and I love plays’,” Campbell said.

Because Campbell considers himself part of the LGBTQ+ community, he is thankful that the play is based off of it.

“As normal as it is these days to be in that community, I do think it could be normalized more so the fact that there is the play and that’s just more normalization and more representation,” Campbell said.