When I arrived at Michigan State University, there were no opportunities for playwrights to have their scripts workshopped or performed. The one student organization that specialized in playwriting, Second Stage Playwriting, floundered during Covid-19 and hadn’t been touched since.

As such, I reestablished Second Stage Playwriting, providing Michigan State students a place and opportunity for feedback and process, culminating in staged readings of selected work yearly. This process from page to stage involved playwrights meeting weekly for group critique and to edit their scripts before directors and actors then built the shows over the course of a week.

As the head of Second Stage Playwriting, I was primarily responsible for producing the annual expose as well as selecting and casting the individual plays that would take part in said expose. Yet, I also regularly found myself not just as the producer, but also oftentimes director, usher, digital marketer, host, and even light board operator.

The main challenge I faced, however, was a lack of human, space, and monetary resources. Second Stage Playwriting, as is natural on a college campus, has to compete with every single other show happening at the same time, leaving few people and fewer spaces available. During the 2025 Expose, every major theatre and rehearsal room on campus was booked for the semester, forcing me to look elsewhere. This involved exploring lecture halls, emailing professors I had never met, and constantly assuring people we would find a space whilst trying not to panic myself. Eventually, this resulted in our second expose taking pace in the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) which happened to have an unused lecture hall.

The oftentimes lack of human resources led to the decision to do week long rehearsal periods. Scheduling our shows in the gap between when one show ends and another begins maximized the potential actor and director pool available, which, when in combination with casting actors in multiple shows, allowed us the manpower to bring student playwrights work to life.