For days, students all over campus were puzzled by posters for “Finding Yourself in America: A Hot Dog Story” which depict various people making crazy faces while holding hot dogs. Three nights last week, dozens watched the short play and got the answer to their pressing question: what is up with those hot dogs?

The half-hour show “Finding Yourself” was a series of off-the-wall scenes inspired by thoughts and personal anecdotes that were woven together to create an entertaining performance.

The all-American cuisine is a metaphor for humanity, according to those involved in the production.  At our core, we’re all the same crimson tubes of meat — and it’s the condiments we choose that make us all unique.

At one point in the show, junior Matthew Frazier pointed to someone in the audience and asked them how they liked their hot dogs.  The answer? Lots of mustard and relish.

“There!” Frazier said.  “Can’t we all just get along and customize our hot dogs as we wish?”

There was even an a cappella R&B number about hot dogs, but “Finding Yourself” was truly about much more.

In one scene, two of the show’s actresses hearkened back to their first day of college, when they feared having the weird roommate as much as being the weird roommate.  One thought of the classic one-cute-guy-in-every-class with a sense of possibilities, while the other dreaded that all of the cute boys would have girlfriends back home.

Junior Ginger Grossman gushed about her journey to France and how she got the travel bug, and now she can’t imagine getting engaged to a guy and settling down.

Junior Lainey Murphy shared a poem about embracing individuality.

“Life is wonderful when you’re just being you,” she said.  “Shakespeare said it best: ‘To thine own self be true.'”

Junior Andrew Zimmer joined a conversation about high school, when “bad” meant “good” and how they never knew which one people meant.

“And I don’t know what a ‘Bad Romance’ is,” the actors all exclaimed, “but [expletive] it sounds exciting!”

With eight different people sharing their musings and memories, anyone could watch the show and take home something different than the person sitting next to them.

The idea and motivation behind creating “Finding Yourself” came from the director and producer of the show, Meredith Montgomery.

It began when Montgomery received a Brown Scholarship to assist her to pursue a community service project.  Like many other scholarship recipients, she chose the route of theater.

In August of 2010, Montgomery selected a crew of eight volunteers who would eventually become her actors.  

The first four months were spent brainstorming.  The actors recorded memories from their pasts and personal lives, and even made art pieces and poems to keep the creative juices flowing.  In the writing process, said one actor, they “found themselves” — hence the title.

Then Montgomery sent out a 10-question sheet to the members of the group, asking them to choose two questions to answer.

The questions were deep and introspective, until one that asked, “What is your relationship to hot dogs?”

Some loved them, some hated them, and some could not eat them due to their religious affiliations.  Regardless, everyone had an opinion about hot dogs. And so, with a solid common ground to build from, a show was born.

After the show, Montgomery and the other stars lined up to answer questions and talk about the play.

According to one performer, hot dogs were just a relatable way to express the journey of self-discovery and knowledge.

“We’re all trying to get an education, but we’re also trying to figure out, ‘What are we going to with our lives?’  And most of us can fool each other into thinking we do know what we’re going to do.”

The show was originally going to be performed for high school students, but the schedule clashed with TAKS testing, so “Finding Yourself” premiered at St. Edward’s instead.

Montgomery is currently in talks to incorporate her show into Freshmen Orientations.

More ambitious still are her plans for Cultural Foundations classes.  If all goes according to her plan, future students would be able to make their own plays and find themselves — hot dogs or not.