When the spiritual leader of a commune dies, all within it are left reeling.

“Good Tidings,” a UCLA alumnus-written play presented by Los Angeles Theatre Initiative, is hosting its three LA previews Feb. 15 and Feb. 16 at Thymele Arts: Shirley Dawn Studio in East Hollywood. The play, which draws from inspirations such as “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights,” is an original work featuring students from both UCLA and Loyola Marymount University and tells the story of a commune that must perform a ritual to find a new spiritual leader after its previous medium dies.

“I have a very well-known and well-documented love for characters who haunt the narrative after they’re gone,” said Julianne Estur, the playwright. “It’s like they’re dead, maybe they’re just absent, but they pervaded the whole story. All of this was going into a play where I was like, ‘Oh, I want to explore all these topics that I have been thinking about since I was a little girl.’”

[Related: UCLA alumni-led ‘Four Women in Red’ raises awareness for Indigenous women]

Growing up, Estur, who graduated from UCLA last summer, said she had always had a fascination with the supernatural, with a special interest in ghosts. This interest was reinforced after she took an English capstone seminar on the Brontë sisters, which she said led her to ponder over how iconic ghosts in literature were women. She also used this play to explore the theme of the empowerment and disempowerment of ghosts, who simultaneously hold a lot of power but also depend on the humans in the story.

A book she found at the Hammer Museum, titled “Séance,” further encouraged her to explore the concept of female mediums, she said. With all of these ideas on her mind, Estur said she started to write what would later become the groundwork for “Good Tidings” in a playwriting class at UCLA, which coincided with her capstone seminar. She added that her love for playwriting started after she attended a creative writing program at the California State Summer School for the Arts the summer before her senior year of high school.

“Playwriting, it’s much more collaborative than I was used to,” Estur said. “I think sometimes with fiction and poetry, they exist on their own, whereas I think a piece of theater, it’s meant to be a collaborative effort. I think that was really, really compelling to me.”

Estur added that her motivation for finishing “Good Tidings” came after she pitched its premise to LATI, an organization that works with students to create stage productions. After the organization picked up her pitch over the summer, she said she spent until January writing and finalizing the script.

Heath Grossman, a second-year theater student and director of the production, said he applied to work on the script after finding out about it through LATI.

“What originally drew me plot-wise was the sense of community that it focuses on,” Grossman said. “It focuses on how intertwined relationships can be and how complicated relationships can sometimes be.”

Grossman said this experience was his first time directing a student play at UCLA, although he was also involved in last winter’s student production of “Much Ado About Nothing,” in which he took on the role of assistant director. He added that the experience of directing “Good Tidings” was unique in that it was an original work, allowing him the opportunity to exercise creative freedom.

Emily Newland, a third-year theater student who plays Lain in the production, said although the script had not been finalized when she first auditioned for it, she found the themes mentioned in the outline to be intriguing. Newland added that after getting cast in December, rehearsals started in week two of winter quarter. One of her favorite memories from the experience was building connections with the rest of the cast.

“I got to meet so many incredible people on this play,” Newland said. “I just love having the opportunity to learn more about other people and their experiences, especially since we’re all artists and a lot of us have very similar passions and dreams, and to foster a community of people that are also wanting to do what you do, it just makes my heart so warm.”

Newland said although she has been doing theater since the age of seven, her approach to it has changed significantly since her start. In “Good Tidings,” she said she leveraged various techniques she has learned throughout her career to get more in character, such as analyzing the script and her character’s motivations, which led her to delve deep into questions about Lain’s relationships with herself and others.

“All of these types of questions to help me narrow down exactly what my purpose is with every line that I say,” Newland said. “It was about, ‘How can I get what I want in this moment of when I’m saying this line, and how do I take care of this one moment that I’m in?’ And that will lead me to the next because the play will support whatever the ultimate goal is.”

Newland said a struggle was making sure that her character’s humanity and struggle with grief shone through, even as the hurt she was feeling from losing a loved one manifested in sassy or aggressive actions.

“I think we are dealing with a lot of heavy emotions in this story, and a lot of those emotions come to the forefront of what’s happening,” Grossman said. “So I hope people can reflect and realize that they shouldn’t always feel ashamed for the way they feel. And I’m really excited just to see what the audience thinks.”

After its LA previews, the team will travel to Scotland to perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August, a decades-old performance arts event that unites thousands of people representing nearly 60 countries.

In the long break between the February and August performances, Grossman said the group plans to continue checking in with each other to review lines, answer questions and go through pickup rehearsals up until the point they get onstage for its many performances at the festival. He added that as a person who has not been exposed to a significant amount of international theater, he is excited to be able to uncover the similarities and differences in outdoor theater across cultures.

[Related: Theatre Palisades continues legacy of community, creativity after LA County fires]

With anticipation for performances rising, Newland said she is looking forward to her friends watching her perform. She added that she sees the LA previews as a good opportunity to see what does and does not work ahead of the run in Scotland.

“I have a lot of these atypical ideas about genres and monsters, and even though some people might not understand that, my work will find the people who will resonate with that,” Estur said. “I’m scared, but if I can move a few people, then I think it’s worth it.”