Jan. 24, 8 p.m., the prompt for this semester’s Play in a Day was released: “It’s a Miracle!” These intrepid writers, actors and theater enthusiasts signed up for a daunting task: write, block and perform short plays in 24 hours. An hour prior, Case Western Reserve University closed all campus operations past 5 p.m., foiling Players’ Theater Group (PTG)’s target start time in the evening. But, the play must go on!
From there, PTG’s executive board was off to the races, trying to save the tradition. When asked how she reacted to the news that CWRU would be shut down before the expected start time, Producer Taylor Bruno said, “Oh no, I hope they don’t close down the buildings because it would be so sad if I couldn’t get into Eldred and have everyone do this show. I hope we can come up with an earlier time.” And that they did. In the end, PTG moved up the performance time to 3 p.m., giving writers the standard 11 hours to work on their scripts and actors only five hours before their performance that afternoon.
By 7 a.m., all scripts were finished. By 9 a.m., actors were called in. For second-year Khyla Wilson-Hill, it was her first time acting since elementary school. While some of her co-actors were panicking at the timeline shift, Wilson-Hill remained largely calm. She did not know a longer timeline, so her development as an actress was pure trial by fire. “How little time [I had] didn’t hit until I was doing the script,” said Wilson-Hill, “I realized that I spent like an hour putting my lines into Quizlet, and I hadn’t practiced any of them yet.” There wasn’t time to fully lose herself to stress.
In an attempt to get people warm and keep the creative juices flowing, Bruno’s advice to everyone involved in the production was to stay in their practice rooms until they moved to Eldred. She made sure food was delivered, encouraged people to stay indoors and fostered a forgiving culture. “In the nature of playing a day where you need as much time as you can to rehearse,” said Bruno, “I guess that naturally blended into a fix for the concerns.” The timeline ended up being a happy accident.
By early afternoon, PTG was presented with yet another hurdle: they couldn’t get into their theater. With a set time of 3 p.m., and blocking still needing to be finished, the team needed to get into Eldred Hall. At 2 p.m., with only an hour left, they finally made it into Eldred Theater. They made it work. “We had very quick tech rehearsals,” said Bruno, “But I don’t think it changed the final product of the show at all.”
To mitigate the impacts of the time constraints further, PTG’s leadership cultivated a space wherein perfection was not expected. “We wanted to encourage an environment where it was okay to not have everything perfect, and it was okay to improvise and make mistakes,” said Bruno, “I think relieving that pressure … helped a lot with keeping the energy and the vibes in a positive state.” It would have been an impossible task to have all the plays go on without a hitch, and refreshingly, the players knew this and supported one another.
For Wilson-Hill’s play, this was particularly important. With a stilted timeframe in Eldred Hall, they were only able to block one piece on the stage, doing the rest in their practice space. For a first-time actor, this was even more destabilizing, but as a credit to the community of acceptance, Wilson-Hill ran with it. “Oh, it’s not as great as I want it to be, and I’m probably gonna mess something up, which I did, but it’s fine,” said Wilson-Hill, the green actor who missed one cue with five hours of rehearsal time—an impressive feat, “It happens that way.”
PTG made it to their 3 p.m. showtime. The curtain went up. Five plays that did not exist 19 hours prior were staged by CWRU’s own students. Wilson-Hill made her debut. Bruno pulled it off. Even sub-zero real-feel temperatures couldn’t break PTG’s spirits. “It was really fun,” said Wilson-Hill, “I really enjoyed it, and I’d probably do it again.” In a similar vein, Bruno said, “I’m so grateful that we were still able to put on this show. I’m grateful to everyone who came and also everyone who was involved. I couldn’t have done it without the cast and crew.” She added, “True to the theme of this semester, it really was a miracle that we were able to do the show.”