It turns out Valentine's Day rehearsal stretched into Valentine's late night, then to early Thursday morning.
"This is just going to take some time and patience, that's what we need tonight," said Odendahl, who has been waiting to do the play for several years.
And patience she got, as the show's star, Grace Gonzalez, who plays Marisol Perez, stood waiting as technical glitches were ironed out of the opening minutes.
"I'm a little nervous," said Gonzalez, a senior at Duke University, while anticipating her cue.
But Gonzalez's nerves didn't surface when she took the stage to rehearse for the Saturday opening of Jose Rivera's "Marisol."
The play, written in 1992, tells the story of Marisol, a Puerto Rican woman who is forced to deal with the notion that God is getting old and does not care about the world's deterioration. In an effort to stop the madness (events like the moon disappearing and Nazis burning the homeless), the guardian angels on Earth have left their posts unguarded to kill God.
"In this play, God is the enemy," said Leslie Stewart, a UNC junior who plays an unnamed woman. "The people in the play come to a point when they can wallow in that and be destroyed or do something about it."
The play, Stewart said, critiques religion, culture, gender roles and capitalism. But the tone is not always heavy, as humor is used frequently.
"You'll be laughing and say, 'oh my gosh, I shouldn't be laughing at that,'" she said.
