For the first time since 2019, Virginia Players performed “Play in a Day” this semester — a production written, directed, rehearsed and memorized in roughly 24 hours. This year, Maggie Polistina, Virginia Players Artistic Director and fourth-year College student, found it important for the organization to bring back “Play in a Day” after its hiatus, wanting to encourage new students to join the team for a low-commitment, fun experience.
“We wanted to revamp Virginia Players … since in a post-pandemic situation, it lost some momentum,” Polistina said. “We also wanted to provide a more direct opportunity for students to get involved with both Virginia Players and the Department of Drama in a more low stakes, lesser time commitment kind of way.”
As the student-run branch of the drama department, Virginia Players gives students an opportunity to get involved in the arts outside of University-led department productions and other student-led groups such as Spectrum Theatre and First Year Players. For “Play in a Day,” Polistina rallied such theater clubs around the University and reached out to friends she knew who held an interest in the discipline in order to help create the cast and creative team.
The organization then compiled student actors, playwrights and directors at 9 a.m. on Sept 26 and 8 a.m. on Sept 27 to work for 12 hours straight each day. At 8 p.m. on Sept 27, the performance was held for students, families and faculty to enjoy in a small performance space in the Drama Building.
As Artistic Director, Polistina oversees and monitors the production of the many performances each semester, taking care of logistics, such as making sure the playbills are created, reserving rehearsal spaces and recruiting people for auditions. For “Play in a Day,” though, Polistina's role was much more creative, having to organize the show and make sure all of the scenes were cohesive.
The show consisted of three short plays. Each play was around 10 minutes long, with genres ranging from comedies to dramas. The playwrights received a prompt for their creations, and randomly selected their cast and theme. In order to connect the works, each show contained a common object and quote — a rope and the phrase, “I heard that she hasn’t left the house in over a year.”
Third-year College student Jack Wolff served as a playwright for “Play in a Day,” creating the intense, emotional piece, “It’s Not You, It’s Me” based on the theme of grief.
“It was a lot of … having trust in my actors and the director to be able to take whatever random nonsense I give them and turn it to something that we're all happy with and can be proud of,” Wolff said.
Anika Kashyap, one of Virginia Players’ Community Outreach Chairs and second-year College student, acted in Wolff’s play. With experience participating in 72- and 48-hour productions in Charlottesville and Richmond, respectively, Kashyap said that the limited time was challenging, with a lack of preparation to do meaningful character work and spend time with the script and materials.
“You don't have the time to do the character work you might normally want to do,” Kashyap said. “But in a way, it was also refreshing to … immediately get the material and spend so much time with it and just like, do it, because you … had less time to … overthink the acting choices you were making.”
Third-year College student Katie Chambers directed the play “Two Idiots Buy a Sponge,” a relatable comedy starring two college upperclassmen going to Walmart to buy a sponge, facing the grueling realities of independence, adulthood and heartbreak. In preparation, Chambers had to make quick decisions, only having one hour to look at her materials before the actors began rehearsing.
“Usually you have months to work with the actors, but in this case, you know, we had … three or four hours the first day to rehearse with them, and then a few hours right before the performance to rehearse with them,” Chambers said.
Sydney Payne, second-year Engineering student and audience member, enjoyed seeing the unique idea come to life, finding it impressive that all of the last-minute scripts seemed so well-established. Payne also appreciated the ambiance of the smaller audience and room.
“I thought it was really cool because it's a lot more intimate … It was a really small audience, so you got to be really up close and personal with the actors,” Payne said.
Despite the time-constraint difficulties, Kashyap said synonymously, the experience was a beneficial team-building exercise, allowing students to bond and make new connections.
“It's lovely because you spend … so much time with those people [and] you're in this, like, fast paced thing together,” Kashyap said.
Polistina also feels that “Play in a Day” was able to bring people together, with Virginia Players acting as a great opportunity to meet people who have similar interests in theater, oversee the inner workings of the department, and get experience seeing the different angles of producing a show.
“Even … in a short amount of time, it is possible to, you know, use theater to bring people together,” Polistina said.
“Play in a Day” was not the only opportunity to see Virginia Players in action this semester. Their Lab Series show “Whenever You’re Ready” written by third-year College student Claudia Hunn, will be performed Nov. 21, 22 and 23 in the Helms Theatre.
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