After thriving under the theatrical spotlight for 14 years, freshman Ashleigh Mathews, 24, is gearing up to play Heather McNamara in UCA Theatre’s production of “Heathers: The Musical.”

Mathews first watched the 1988 dark comedy “Heathers” when she was around 17 years old.

“I had never even watched the movie, which is surprising, because I’d watched like every 80s movie with Winona Ryder in it,” Mathews said. “This was one that I hadn’t seen. I had heard of it but didn’t know anything about it. So I watched it, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh if I was to do this show I want to be Heather McNamara.’”

Since then, Mathews has spent years singing the musical adaptation’s soundtrack with her friends.

With nearly a week till showtime, Mathews can’t wait to delve further into her craft.

“I love the experience [preparing for a show] every single time,” Mathews said. “And it gets down to the week before tech, and the week of tech and everyone’s kind of like, ‘Wow.’ It’s when my best work comes out and I start to try different things. And some of it works, some of it doesn’t, and that’s the process of creating, and I love it.”

Another aspect of the upcoming production that Mathews is excited about is its set design created by André Brandão de Castro, an assistant professor of theater.

“André showed us an amazing rendering of the set design, and I believe in André,” Mathews said. “I’m seeing it come together bit by bit, and I can already see where it’s going.”

The set will be two stories tall, featuring several locations found throughout the story such as the mall and Westerburg High. The centerpiece for the design is an 8-foot-long turntable that will serve as a 7-Eleven and character JD’s bedroom.

Getting a degree in theater and film, Mathews first began acting when she was only 10 years old in a local production of “The Sound of Music,” one of her favorite movies as a child.

“We used to get the newspaper, and there was an ad for auditions at our community theater in Fort Smith,” Mathews said.

After auditioning for the show, Mathews was given a callback and cast in the role of Gretl von Trapp.

“As they say, I caught the bug, and I’ve been doing it ever since,” Mathews said.

Since then Mathews has been in upwards of 20 different productions.

A few of Mathews’ favorite productions include  “Seussical the Musical,” where she portrayed lead character Gertrude McFuzz, as well as “Hamlet,” where she starred as a gender-bent Laertes.

Other Shakespeare shows that Mathews has been a part of are “The Tempest” and “As You Like It.”

Mathew first began her career in higher education in Dallas, Texas, in 2019, attending KD Conservatory and earning an associate’s degree in musical theater.

“I got my associate’s degree, and I decided that it wasn’t enough. I wanted my bachelor’s and I wanted more experience outside of Dallas,” Mathews said.

Mathews said she “learned a lot” but that it was a struggle.

“It was during the pandemic and everything kind of went online for two of my semesters,” Mathews said. “But I had different instructors every class, and I liked getting their perspective on similar things. We did a lot of different methods for acting.”

Since moving to UCA, Mathews has quickly gotten used to the university’s large community and freeing nature.

“The conservatory was also trying to mold me into a specific category,” Mathews said. “If they didn’t like the way that I sang, they tried to make me sing a different way, and that was fine, and that gave me experience, but they [UCA] really just want to work with what I have, what I am capable of.”

Having been classically trained since junior high school, Mathews sang with a more operatic tone before joining the conservatory.

“When I went to the conservatory, they were like, ‘That’s not going to get you many roles. We need to make you a belter.’ So they worked with me on both aspects, classical and trying to get me into this more chesty, loud category, which I was not before,” Mathews said. “But I gained confidence in it, and I worked on it really hard, and it got me a role that is traditionally belting, which is Gertrude McFuzz. And that was very fun, very, very hard, technically speaking, but I feel a lot more confident in my abilities to do both.”