If you’re curious about what the full breakdown of the day we made My New Year’s Resolution looked like, I offer you this excerpt from my journal.

6am: Wake up and furiously refresh my inbox. Last night, I was paired with Kallan and we cast our four actors. (Kallan stayed up all night to write.)

6:30am: Text Kallan. receive the below text.

7am: Walk out the door to get on the subway and receive the play via email on my phone. Read play on the subway and text Kallan anytime I get service at a stop. Immediately love the play and simultaneously think, “How on earth are we gonna pull this off?” Badger Kallan with questions about style and tone and pacing and schedule.

7:45am: Arrive at Classic Stage Theater with a mocha and a cheese danish and immediately sit down in a chair to read the play again on my phone.

8am: Breakfast at Classic Stage. Weasel my way in to sit amongst the designers while everyone else is mingling so I can start planting seeds in their brain for tech. (I am devious. but it works.) I start pre-blocking in my notebook since scripts are being printed.

8:45am: Scripts are supposed to be here, but they aren’t yet, so I keep blocking and scheming and avoiding eye contact with the actors, since we’re not supposed to reveal what actors we have cast until the scripts arrive.

9:25am: Scripts arrive! Casts are revealed! We all dash to the subway to try and make the most of our rehearsal time back at Pace University

10am: Rehearsal! I touch base with Kallan and our stage manager Vi about how we want to run the room. We do table work. Kallan goes home to sleep. We get up on our feet. We rehearse rehearse rehearse.

1pm: We take lunch.

1:30pm: We’re back at it. Rehearse rehearse rehearse. Our costume designer Kat visits and brings us some options. We run the show in our little rehearsal room.

2:45pm: We pile back on the subway to Classic Stage. Actors practice lines on the train. I talk to Vi about how we will handle our half hour (!) of tech.

3:05pm: Get a chai latte in the lobby of Classic Stage. Crucial.

3:10pm: I realize the show needs one more sound cue to close it out. I frantically scroll through Spotify instrumental playlists until i find something that works.

3:15pm: Tech. We have 30 minutes to tech the entire show, which, naturally, has more than three times the number of cues we were told was our max. Patrick, the production stage manager, is absolutely incredible, as is Rachel, our lighting designer, and as is Mellie, our sound designer. We somehow get the whole show cued. We do not have time to do a full run through of the show in the theater with tech. The actors are agog.

3:45pm: Subway again!

4:15pm: We take some floor time. That means we all lie on the floor for a while. Very important part of the process.

4:30pm: We move to a bigger rehearsal room. We run the show again.

5pm: Kallan returns and watches us run the show again. She likes it! Thank goodness.

5:40pm: We race back to the subway so we’re not late for dinner.

6pm: Dinner! i can barely eat. I am running on fumes.

7pm: Change into something presentable and try to wipe away the flop sweat.

7:30pm: House opens.

8pm: The shows begin! I am so hugely proud of our entire team, as well as very grateful for the many amazing people who make the 24 Hour Plays: Nationals happen — Mark Armstrong, Serena Berman, Jake Beckhard, Madelyn Paquette, and too many others to name. Obsessed with having gotten to direct a play featuring the line “Boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend.”