The RHS Drama Guild recently put on their first production of the year: a virtual play called Check, Please. The play was directed by senior Madi Dunbar, and the entire play was rehearsed on Google Meets and recorded through Zoom calls. 

“It was honestly such a crazy experience,” said Dunbar. “Doing virtual meets for rehearsals was difficult as can be expected, but the results were so impressive. Everyone who participated went above and beyond any expectation, I had for our outcome.”

Check, Please is a one-act comedy play. “I would describe it as a fun, light-hearted show about a series of really bad blind dates,” said sophomore Lila Wagner Gleeson, who had a starring role in it.

In November students started rehearsing every day until the actual filming of the production, which took place at Walls Elementary School. It was a complicated process that involved several cell phones connected through Zoom calls.

“We couldn’t be near each other, and it was definitely hard getting the technical stuff done because we had to be in separate rooms,” admitted Gleeson. “It’s kind of like acting on a Facetime with somebody. We couldn’t do any big physical acting; a lot of it was just in our facial expressions and tone of voice.”

“The recording process of the scenes was also just… SUCH an experience,” explained Dunbar. “We had green screens and tripods with lighting just so that way it would appear in decent light on the Zoom recording. People would show up at different times so that way we had as few people as possible in the room while trying to record, obviously all masked unless they were being recorded.”

Despite the challenges of doing a production during a pandemic, the experience was worth it. “Even though it was very different and not what we had expected or hoped, we’re grateful we had the chance to do something and have a creative outlet,” Gleeson told the Colonel.

“All-in-all, the experience was stressful, unexpected, but so, so rewarding being able to see it all come together,” said Dunbar. 

According to Dunbar, the Drama Guild already has many exciting plans for the rest of this year. “Well, we will be doing another play sometime soon,” she said. “Jay Young will be directing a show he wrote, which is very exciting. “

“We also are now doing monthly ‘challenges’ for our Drama Guild members, this month’s being an anti-valentines day lipsync music video challenge. And finally, a virtual talent show open to anyone is in the works right now… so, a whole bunch of exciting stuff!”