The theater department has begun working on their female-focused fall play, “Steel Magnolias.”

“We were talking to plan at the end of the year last year and we wanted to do a show that focused mainly on females and one that mainly focused on boys so that we could really hone in on smaller groups of kids and do harder work with them,” director Lisa Custer said. “So I picked ‘Steel Magnolias’ because I’ve directed it before and I really liked it and I thought we had really good girls for it.”

It’s important to Custer that she work on the students’ skills now in smaller groups because many will be graduating soon.

“I really want our kids to connect with one another to where the skills that they use to create these connections transfer over into our other shows this year and beyond,” Custer said. “Some of these kiddos are going to go to college for performance and so we want to give them a really good basis of some tools that they can use to become better performers.”

The play’s female-focus is especially important in a time where feminism is high and movies like “Barbie” and “The Woman King” are seeing success. The new feminist era focuses on female emotion, and relationships, which this play portays well.

“I really want to show women’s friendships and the confidence and power we gain through our relationships with other women,” Custer said. “So kind of women empowerment but really where we gather a lot of our strength in our relationships with other women.”

In the play, six women in a small Louisiana town come together at a local beauty shop that is located at one of the women’s houses. The ladies come together to gossip and talk about what is going on in their lives. Some have it harder than others and they help each other through tough times.

“The reason I wanted to do the play was that I am particularly connected to this play,” Custer said. “When I grew up, my grandmother owned a beauty shop connected to her house. I grew up in her beauty shop with the same kind of ladies in the movie. All the magazines they reference in the play and movie — I grew up on. All the culture of that environment is very familiar and precious to me in my memories of my grandmother. It’s kind of a way to honor my grandmother too.”

Steel Magnolias will premiere Oct. 12 at 7 p.m. in the auditorium.