Raw, real emotion. That’s how I would describe Hers, the student-written play that was performed by the Albany High Theater Ensemble this weekend.

This play explored the stereotypes women face, identity issues, toxic relationships, eating disorders, and much more. It exposed the fact that when we are young we don’t realize the stereotyping we experience, and how those stereotypes became embedded in our society overtime.

In addition, we were told to snap when we related to something that was said and it was quite alarming how many people experienced some of these terrible things, it also somehow seemed to bring everyone together. But clearly if so many people are experiencing these traumatizing things, these issues need to be address in society more often, rather than being a taboo topic like it is at the moment.

These topics are problems that a vast majority of women experience and this play was very eye-opening, informative, and healing. Maybe they’re so taboo because society can’t deal with uncomfortable realities and conversations, but awareness definitely needs to be spread throughout the world.

There was one scene that I particularly liked, which involved “kids” participating in show and tell at school, when some of the kids brought up and talked about things they really loved. The class reaction wasn’t always positive, but after hearing the reasoning about why kid thought their thing was cool, the rest always agreed. I feel like this is how society should work in general: people should be informed and open-minded not helpful. Also, each show and tell object had its own take on common stereotypes, like a girl playing with a dinosaur instead of a unicorn, although if you really think about it, it had three horns instead of one making it even better than a unicorn!

Overall, I highly enjoyed this play and it is much more than just a play, it’s truly an experience and exposes the taboos society has made, that in reality should be constantly talked about.  I applaud everyone who was involved in this production for pushing the limits that society has set.