“Holy Cross Sucks” written and performed by Rob Nash and directed by Jeff Calhoun was on the Mainstage Theatre March 22 and March 23.
Rob Nash played around 25 characters loosely based off his own high school friends and family. It started off Freshman year, 1981 and ended right after graduation. The play closely followed three friends and their high school triumphs and problems in a Catholic Jesuit high school, “Holy Cross.”
This one-man play is critically acclaimed by New York Times and Variety, with versions of it having been on Broadway and finally brought here to Turlock. With so many characters for one man to play, a person might think it impossible. 
“Practice. You kind of anchor the body and the voice such that when I strike the pose the voice comes or if I say the voice, the pose comes. And you do it over and over and over again. You spend more time practicing than you do on the ball court…and I talk to myself all the time…in the character’s voices,” Nash said in a question and answer portion of the show. 
For the first few minutes of the show it is hard to keep the characters straight. As it goes on, you realize that each character has his/her own body stance and their own presence. Jeff Calhoun does a great job of directing Nash in a way that the play flows and you almost fall in love with Nash’s characters. 
Resembling John Hughes’ movies and characters, “Holy Cross Sucks” uses the typical high school stereotypes and cliques. You have the jock, the nerd and a gay student as the three main characters. Nash also brings in the extreme Star Trek fan, Norman, who is always making aware of how many ways he could kill a person. 
“Doesn’t everyone know Norman?…In high school he would take a chinese star out of his pocket hoping you would act very impressed and want to be his friend. Everybody knows that guy,” said Nash about his character Norman. 
“Holy Cross Sucks” also touches on the issue of homosexuality in the 80’s at a Catholic high school. The character, Ben, is the one that comes out to all of his friends sophomore year. Ben is also Nash’s character that he wrote based on himself.
Nash discussed coming to terms with his own sexuality and receiving support from his straight and gay friends. This was also around the time when the Harvey Milk documentary came out and it was a little more widely accepted. 
“Back then, there really wasn’t enough hate…well, there was plenty of hate, but it wasn’t focused in backlash yet, so I kind of got in under the radar,” Nash said.
The crew and Nash had about 12 hours to put this whole show together for the California State University, Stanislaus students. For such a short amount of time, the lighting and sound cues were very much on point. There were probably one or two mistakes here and there, but that is a result from not having a whole week to practice it like many other shows on the CSU Stanislaus campus. 
Through great acting, smooth directing and spot on technical direction, Rob Nash was able to put on a great show highlighting some of his most important moments throughout his high school career.