Twin sisters Natalie and Sophia Casa have loved participating in theater since they were students at Laurel School in Shaker Heights.

Now rising college sophomores—Natalie us a film major at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, and Sophia is a journalism major at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois—used their experiences in high school theater to write an original musical comedy, “Ship Show.”

The play will debut at the 2024 BorderLight Theare Festival this Thursday, July 25 at the Hermit Club, where it will run through Saturday, July 27.

Natalie and Sophia enlisted the help of friends and former classmates to produce the play, which Sophia says is a true comedy.

“It's not too deep,” she says. “But it’s about the joy of making art, the joy of creativity, the joy of collaboration. It's just been a really fun time, and I'm really excited for it.”

Ship Show“Ship Show,” directed by Treva Offutt, focuses on two ensemble members in an off-off-off-Broadway production about the Titanic. The ensemble members, Signholder 1 and Signholder 2—played by the Casa sisters—must simply hold cardboard signs reading “The” and “Titanic” during the Lead Actor’s opening number.

When the pompous and temperamental Lead Actor, played by Indira Katiyar (“In reality, she's the sweetest person alive,” says Sophia), gets injured mid-show and disappears, the two Signholders take it upon themselves to rewrite the show.

“They're just the sign holders who hold up two signs in the opening number, and that's it,” Sophia explains. “But then there's a crash heard offstage, so they assume the Lead Actor is incapacitated, or even worse, dead. So they take it into their own hands to create the show themselves.”

A hilarious and heartwarming journey ensues as the overeager but well-meaning sign holders dive headfirst into mounting their own version of the play. “What they might lack in knowledge, they make up for in enthusiasm,” Sophia says.

Their antics catch the attention of the very-much-alive Lead Actor and his father—who turns out to be Elton John (played by Gregory Markgraf-Grimes). Father and son then attempt to nip the whole endeavor in the bud.

Natalie says “bumbling idiots” is a good phrase to describe the Signholders.

“I think they're more earnest than anything—they're just so excited to do stuff that they end up biting off more than they can necessarily chew,” she explains. “And that leads them to kind of argue, but they make up in the end. So that’s a pretty good way to describe it.”

“Ship Show” celebrates collaboration, passion, and the power of art through humor and its seven original songs. Natalie says she thinks the material will appeal to a wide audience—or at least those who are looking for light, offbeat theater.

“I just want a lot of people to see it if they want something that's kind of goofy but has a message underneath,” Natalie says. “It's pretty light-hearted. It's pretty silly.”

Additional “Ship Show” crew members include stage manager and sound designer Forest Jerome-Williams, lighting designer Owen Pinhasi, marketing director Esther Ling, and stagehands Lauren Hunder and Nora Katiyar.

“Ship Show” runs Thursday, July 25 at 9 p.m., Friday, July 26 at 5:30 p.m., and Saturday, July 27 at 4 p.m. at the Hermit Club, 1629 Dodge Court, part of Hofbräuhaus Cleveland. Tickets are $12 to $20.