When AHS senior and IB Diploma candidate Nakiri Gallagher-Cave decided to put on a musical for her Creativity, Activity, and Service (CAS) project, she never could have foreseen the many complications that would come with directing, producing, and designing a musical. However, despite the numerous predicaments that presented themselves such as one of the actors injuring her knee and another coming down with pneumonia performance weekend, she was able to put on the production.

“It was an experience to say the least,” Gallagher-Cave said. “And it actually worked so so well with the cast we ended up with in final performances.”

Originally, Gallagher-Cave had planned on helping out a local theater company, Thunder River Theater, with their publicity, specifically broadcasting their productions to a younger audience, after she noticed the vast majority of the audience was adults.

“Whenever I go to [Thunder River] I’m always the youngest there,” Gallagher-Cave said.

However, after attending a theater program over the summer at Columbia University, Gallagher-Cave met another IB Diploma student from Panama who was directing a play for her CAS project, and finding the Thunder River publicity project was more complicated than she had anticipated, she decided she would direct a play as while. However, while her Panamanian friend was solely directing the play, Gallagher-Cave made the decision to put on the entire play herself, taking on responsibilities such as lighting and sound design, design of the program, and all the other production aspects.  

Gallagher-Cave chose to put on Ordinary Days, a musical that details the lives of four different people living in New York City. Gallagher-Cave came upon the show almost by accident, when she heard one of the songs playing, and she fell in love. She decided to research the show a little bit, and was happy to see that it fit her requirements.

“A four person show was the perfect size for this project, and it’s just sweet enough, but also simple and so cute and perfect for the people we had [at the beginning] of the process,” Gallagher-Cave said.

However of the four people originally selected to participate (Lyon Hamill, Francesca Seeman, Kaia Vresilovic, and Garrett Green) , two were forced to drop due to injury and sickness, only one was in the final production. When Seeman badly injured her knee, Gallagher-Cave had to find a new co-director and step into a role herself. The weekend of the show when Vresilovic came down with walking pneumonia, Gallagher-Cave ended up having to replace one actress with her younger sister Devi Gallagher, who is in 7th grade at Aspen Middle School.

“The morning of the show [Nakiri] asked me if I could be in her show, and at first I didn’t want to, but I agreed after a while because I already knew all the songs,” the younger Gallagher sister said.

In her director’s note to the audience in the program for Ordinary Days, Gallagher-Cave detailed the incongruity of trying to produce a play because she thought it would be the less complicated plan of two arduous ideas.

“Looking back, it’s ironic that I thought my arts-outreach project would be too complicated, because the process of putting Ordinary Days together has been the most complicated, frustrating, and overwhelming months of my life,” Gallagher-Cave wrote.

However, she also addressed that the project of producing, directing and starring in a musical has taught her more about theater than she ever thought she would know, and overall, gave her a chance to explore more within her passion. In the end, the process seemed to be worth it because she was able to learn and grow.

“These past few weeks have also been incredibly rewarding,” Gallagher-Cave said. “Throughout the process, I have had the joy of learning about lighting and costume design, the organization that is required to produce a show, and seeing another side of theatre that I had not previously explored.”