Student Blog: Co-Artistic Directing HOLIPLAY

This semester I got the pleasure of Co-Artistic directing a series of holiday-themed short one-acts completely student-written, directed, performed, and produced. I love that my school does so many of these little one-acts and I’m super grateful when I get to be a part of them.

At my school, we have a tradition that at the end of the year all the seniors do this thing called Senior Will downs, where they pass down items and things they have to the underclassmen. Last year, the amazing artistic director of the first Holiplay asked me and my wonderful friend Kennedee, if we would like to be “willed down” Holiplay, and run it for the following year. I, of course, said yes and was so so honored.

I had never artistic directed anything before, so I was a little nervous about how it would go and there was a lot more that went into it than I initially thought. The days leading up to holiplay, Kennedee and I were running around like chicken with our heads cut off making sure everything got done. From the program, to gathering all the props people needed, it was a lot. But I wouldn’t have had it any other way. 

We started out the whole process in May. Kennedee and I met to talk about setting a date, how many plays we wanted, and other details like that. We also suggested writers and directors and we started reaching out to them in mid-July. I know that seems like wayyyy ahead of the game considering Holiplay wasn’t until December, but it takes a village to get these kinds of things together. So the sooner we got everything together. We then didn’t meet again until August and we made a calendar for when auditions would be and all that jazz. From there, it was mainly a lot of sending emails and making google forms. We had to pair directors up with writers, make audition forms, and then also host the casting meeting with all the directors and help delegate that. After that, we kind of stepped back and let the directors and our stage manager take over. Our stage manager collected biographies from all the playwrights, directors, and cast. She also collected ground plans for all the plays and such. The next time we would meet would be during our tech run, the day before the show. In the meantime, Kennedee and I met once or twice to finalize a few things like booking spaces for rehearsals and the order of the evening and a few other things. I also talked with our amazing sponsor, Alpha Psi Omega, and they sold cookies and hot chocolate and also paid for some of our props. They were great. So we organized that and worked with them, which was very easy since I am the president of APO and I have an amazing board who are so wonderful and helpful. After that, we met up for our tech run the day before the show! Our tech run consisted of running through transitions and assigning people to set pieces to take on and off, and then running the show in full costume and make-up. Then we were ready for an audience!

The performance went so well and I’m super proud of all the work everyone did. I also got to write for Holiplay, and it is honestly one of my favorite plays that I have ever written and I am so blessed to have gotten to put it on. I also loved getting to help artistic direct. It was so cool to get to be on the inside of putting together a show like this. It was definitely stressful at times, but I loved it. I loved it a lot and I definitely want to do this in the future.

Happy holidays friends, support new work, and as always, go do great things.