The four-day long performance of “The Romancers” from the theater department was smooth compared to the months of preparation behind the scenes.  

Recently, the Wayne State College theater department performed a play known as “The Romancers.” The play follows a tale of two young lovers with parents who harbor a longstanding feud with each other, with plot twists, misunderstandings and much more. 

“Well, it is an example of romantic literature where things are idealized,” Mollie Young, adjunct professor of theater and director, said. “And yet it also has sort of a twist in it where reality comes crashing down on the young lovers and they figure out if they’re really in love with each other, or they’re just in love with the idea of being in love.” 

Stage Manager, Reilly Vrbka, said the play is about theater including the fun parts, the messy parts, the chaos, seeing how the new actors learn and seeing the older actors who’ve been through this and know what they’re doing. 

“It’s just a very interesting and fun look into the theater world that I feel like a lot of non-theater people don’t usually get to look into,” Vrbka said. 

While the play creates a comedic feel for the audience, the production behind the scenes was troubling with casting being a primary factor. 

“It’s really difficult because we cast two shows with one audition,” Young said. “We had over 60 people audition for about, I would say, 30 roles between the two shows and it’s tough.” 

Young said that they’ve had a lot of “really talented” people, meaning that it could’ve gone several different ways. Young said the good thing about the cast was that a few of them were multi-lingual, so it provided some comedic values when it came to the bilingual elements that are a part of the show. 

“It’s just really cool to have a bilingual actor have the chance to perform in both of her native languages, which I think is really cool,” Vrbka said. 

While discussing the play, Vrbka said the play was in public domain, so Young was able to make changes that would elevate the performance. Furthermore, the original script had characters with little interactions, so they changed it to where those characters presented more dynamics to the characters’ relationships. 

“You get the actors to come in and they have their own takes on each of these characters, which is really fun to see them build into these characters and change them over the months that we have of rehearsal,” Vrbka said.