Some of the best actors in theater have won awards, made millions of dollars and are recognized around the world, but have never performed in a play written especially for them. This weekend, 12 Penn State graduate theatre students will be able to say that they have.

The Penn State School of Theatre's production of PUSH, written by Rob Caisley, has been in development for more than a year and a half. School of Theatre professor Mark Olsen, director of the play, said Caisley, himself and all 12 of the third year graduate students collaborated together, beginning with improvisational sessions that inspired the script.

"Over time, characters started to emerge," Olsen said. "[Caisley] would go away, and when he came back, he had written some monologues and a few scenes."

Caisley would ask each of the actors about their dreams, anxieties and deepest fears and drew inspiration from each session the group would have together, Olsen said.

Anna Elwood (graduate-theatre), who plays Claire in the play, said even though the characters are not direct reflections of the actors, Caisley ended up creating the characters from elements of their answers.

"In a way, the characters in the play are kind of like an aspect of ourselves," she said. "It's weird to see how it evolved from what we said into this whole other entity of its own."

PUSH opens this weekend at the Penn State Downtown Theatre Center, 146 S. Allen St., and continues with 13 performances until Feb. 23.

The story revolves around 12 people in Los Angeles and how their lives are intertwined with each other in unexpected ways, similar to the movie Crash, Olsen said.

One of the main characters, Aaron, played by Jason Boat (graduate-theatre), is a screenwriter who is going through a divorce with his wife after she has left him for another woman.

Just like in Crash, other characters' stories branch off of Aaron's.

"This show explores relationships, and his relationship has just ended," Boat said.

Olsen said PUSH deals with the effect each character has in moving the others' lives forward.

"One of the core ideas [of the play] deals with the title itself, meaning that in our lives, in its dramatic version and comic version, we get pushed ... by the tensions and relationships in directions that we couldn't have predicted," he said.

Because the conversations among the graduate students and playwright inspired the show, Caisley used a very modern writing style in PUSH that especially relates to student audiences, Olsen said.

"It's more HBO than network," he said, referring to foul language that is included in the performance. "It's not backing away from contemporary life."

The set also reflects this modern style, expanding a "metaphoric" Los Angeles as the setting in an abstract sense, Olsen said.

Large protruding rectangles of muted colors, some made of translucent glass lit from behind, are meant to represent the city's many billboards, lit signs, movie screens and windows.

Olsen said that, among the rectangles, three screens adorning the stage create "liquid" scenery.

"[The designers] computerized our scenery and managed to use digital, live and recorded footage to create mood, situation, place and time," he said.

Scenic designer Justin Couchara (senior-theatre) said he used the modular feeling to capture the cinematic aspect of the script, wanting to maintain each episode's importance.

"There's a lot of different scenes and to concentrate on one scene would have taken away from the other physical places," he said.

The lighting director, sound director and Couchara all had to work together to incorporate the screens.

He said the images projected on them add a new element to PUSH that

has never been done before at Penn State.

"It's a little bit different than theater because theater's a rehearsed thing," Couchara said, adding that the projections on the screens are "still like this live being."