Opening night of Seattle Pacific University Theatre Company’s “Little Women” was Thursday, April 16. The production runs for several nights, closing on Saturday, April 25. The show is the first student-produced show to be set in Mckinley Hall’s E.E. Bach Mainstage Theatre.

The play is directed by Josephine Partridge, a fourth year majoring in theatre performance, honors liberal arts and music, who also works as the associate producer and marketing director of the SPU Theatre Company. The script, based on Louisa May Alcott’s series of books, “Little Women,” was initially written in 1912. Partridge edited the script to make the production more accurate to the books.

“I looked for a lot of the classic story-points that we know and love, and [the script] was missing a lot of them, so I thought let’s bring those in. Studying the language of it, it was like 99 percent taken directly from the book, so I studied the books, and took the language directly from that for the areas that I rewrote with little bits and pieces of [my own] words, but mostly Lousia May Alcott’s,” Partridge said.

As of this academic year, SPU no longer has a theater department, rather an on-campus club run by former theater students. Partridge expressed how much has changed since the dismantlement of the department without the guidance of previous theater faculty and staff.

“It has been different. The big thing I have been noticing is that every time we get to a week of something I am like ‘Oh there is a whole list of stuff that Candance Vance and Tucker Goodman took care of and never told us about.’ We have to do a whole bunch of new things the week of. They were so humble in their work, and so seeing everything that goes into it is mind-boggling,” Partridge said. “All of the technical aspects of the stage I am not trained in, but seeing my teammates, my peers, working on it blows my mind.”

Partridge explained that she knew the script of “Little Women” was the one when she found connections to Seattle Pacific’s community within it.

“I was able to support those elements of the feeling that you’re outgrowing a community, that your home is being taken away and that you need to find it again and the elements of family and clinging onto family while finding your identity,; which were all things that we felt were important for the state of our community,” Partridge said.

To purchase tickets or stay in the loop with SPU Theatre Company’s events, follow @sputheatre on Instagram.