Piano and theatre performance major, senior Maggie Brown, first became interested in composition when she helped write “Cows: The Moosical” during her freshman year with fellow theater major Anderson Zoll. After Zoll graduated and enrolled at the University of Michigan, he contacted Brown during her sophomore year with a new opportunity to write the musical that would become “Walk You Back To Your Car”. After many Zoom calls and summers spent in Michigan with Zoll, Brown will put on the finished musical at the McCallum Arts Center on May 27 at 6 p.m. 

Zoll proposed to center the musical around three couples from different walks of life, which intrigued Brown not only because of the storyline, but because of the production’s feasibility.

“There’s no fluff and every moment is important,” Brown said. “I liked the idea of a show that would be really doable to produce. Our dream for the show is to be able to kind of package it up and have it so that high schools can license it and perform it as well.”

Initially, Brown thought she finished the show after producing the first draft in a Michigan studio at the end of her sophomore year. However, when a Michigan-based production company contacted Zoll and expressed their interest in the show, Brown and Zoll agreed to rewrite and orchestrate the show so that the company could perform it at festivals. After this reworking, Brown and Zoll put together the most recent version with a full orchestral instrumentation this year at the University of Michigan. Now, Brown brings the finished product to McCallum, where six Knights will perform her vision of the three couples in the show undergoing different stages of life while walking back to their car after a party. Senior Sami Spear, who is assistant director of the show and plays the role of Josie, heard about “Walk You Back To Your Car” from her friend Brown while she was still writing it. As Spear saw Brown developing the show, her interest in it grew as well.

“Whenever she introduced the idea of wanting to put on this production at McCallum, I stepped up,” Spear said. “I’d love to help in any way possible. Since she had known that I had been kind of following her journey in this process for a while, she offered me the position of assistant director.”

Senior Coda Becker, playing the role of Grayson, believes that Brown’s directing style allows him freedom of expression behind characters, helping him to become the character even more. While most of the rehearsals so far have been just walking through blocking, Becker believes that learning the blocking first will help later on in the rehearsal process.

“These walkthroughs help me internalize the blocking and lines without pressure,” Becker said. “Because of this, once we start doing runs with full acting, we won’t have to actively think about the blocking and we can just let the character take over.” 

Junior Elodie Bollich, who plays Spear’s counterpart, Maeve, believes that the show is one of the best rehearsal experiences she’s had throughout her entire theatrical career. 

“It’s one of my favorite rehearsal processes I’ve ever been a part of because she really focuses on the acting,” Bollich said. “With Maggie, I really feel like I understand my character and the relationship with Josie, played by Sami.”

Under Brown’s direction, Becker has found ways to relate to his character in order to portray the role most realistically to similar real life scenarios. 

“Maggie has given me a lot of freedom regarding what goes on in his mind,” Becker said. “She wants me to play Grayson as how Coda would react and that has definitely drawn me into how I can make this character similar to Coda.”

Spear also understands the importance to Brown of drawing meaning from the characters in order to properly convey all the complex themes in the show. One of the big themes other than heartbreak, new love and enduring long distance, is the passage of time.

“There’s one couple that’s breaking up, there’s one couple that’s about to get together, and there’s one couple where one [person] is about to leave and go study abroad,” Spear said. “It  shows the three different very special relationships that these characters share with each other and shows the love and connection that they feel for each other.” 

The reason why Brown wants to provide the performers with personal connection to their roles is to make the characters and therefore the show more relatable to all audiences. 

“The main purpose of this show has always been to feel like, in any moment, you can connect to the people on stage in one way or another,” Brown said. “So I think that people can find something to relate in all three couples. The show is really just about love and the human experience.”

While the genuinity of the characters is what Spear believes makes the show unique, it also poses a challenge for actors. Spear is used to playing more over-the-top characters, which makes playing more down-to-earth roles more difficult. 

“A lot of us theater students are used to playing these big, booming characters,” Spear said. “And Maggie is reinforcing that she does not want that kind of a vibe for the show. She wants it to feel very realistic, like we are actually leaving a party and talking to our friends.”

The closeness of the cast along with the smaller cast size will make this challenge easier according to Bollich, Becker and Spear. Brown is extremely excited to share her multi-year long project with her entire McCallum community, as she believes that not many people in her communities outside of fine arts have seen this side of her. If not for the show, Brown believes she would not be going to college for musical composition.

“It’s pushed me as a composer,” Brown said. “The show’s grown up with me and there were characters in the show that I didn’t necessarily understand when I was a sophomore or even as a junior. In order to do these characters justice, I’ve pushed myself to grow as a human so that I can understand their feelings and what they’re going through on stage. So it’s just been a transformative project that’s followed me since sophomore year and senior year now. I hope [it] will continue to follow me even after this year.”

This story was originally published on The Shield Online on May 18, 2026.