CSUF Titans’ theatrical talent takes stage at inaugural playwrights festival | Lifestyle

Student playwrights of Cal State Fullerton assembled at the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana on Friday and Saturday to perform the original plays they had been working on since the fall 2025 semester.

The inaugural Titan Playwrights Festival hosted an hour-long performance of five 10-minute plays, following the theme “Yours, Mine, Ours.” The pieces were completely written, directed and performed by CSUF students.

“We had, in the fall, an open call for submissions,” said Jack Novak, event coordinator, playwright mentor and CSUF theater professor. “We had something like 16 plays submitted this first year in the festival and then I had a group of adjudicators who read and evaluated the plays, both faculty, staff and students, and from that we selected the plays that we were going to work with.”

The plays that were selected were “Daredevil on the Rocks,” written by Elizabeth Kronick, “Burn the Witch!” by Malerie Tabayoyon, “Aye Bea See Dee,” by Dylan Magallanes, “What Was Yours is Now Ours,” by Maha Tahir and “20 Somethings Diary,” written by Maviene Tran.

While some of the playwrights admired their work from the audience, others such as Magallanes and Tran, performed in their own plays or even helped out a fellow playwright by acting for those original works.

“Selfishly, I wanted to act on the stage at Grand Central (Art Center) because I’ve seen so many shows here and I’ve worked here,” said Magallanes, a third-year devised performance/physical theater major. “I wrote the play separately and then they told me that I could perform in it and I was like, ‘Oh, that would be cool,’ and so I did that.”

The idea for a playwrights festival came about when Novak consulted the chair of the Department of Theater and Dance Kathryn Wilson about a year ago to have a space for students to submit and have the resources and mentorship to produce original pieces.

The theme of “Yours, Mine, Ours” was chosen with the intent to inspire open-ended, smart and creative submissions with an array of different responses. The students had the option to create plays based on one or all of the theme words. 

“‘Yours, Mine, Ours,’ I think applies to what belongs to one of us and also belongs to all of us,” Tran, a fourth-year theater major, said. “With my play, especially the idea of writing in a diary, that doesn’t belong to you but when you choose to tell others about it, it no longer belongs to you.”

Tran’s play is a monologue-style comedy/drama where their character reads and acts out entries from their diary at different stages of life. In the end, it revealed the message that it’s okay to step out of a journal and live life in the moment. Tran’s inspiration came from their own habit of journaling as a child.

While some of the participating playwrights have written plays of all lengths before, others came into the experience blind and walked through the process for the first time.

“I took a script writing class a year before fall submissions so I went, ‘Okay, I know how to write a script,’ albeit for film and not stage,’” Tahir, a third-year theater and communications major, said “I just spent some time brainstorming ideas, the first scene was my first image and I ran from there.” 

Tahir interpreted the festival theme through the fact that all of the words of the theme are possessive nouns, correlating that to the thought of ownership. 

Her play is about the symptoms of PTSD and how trauma and traumatic events can elicit hallucinations. It tackles intense topics, such as sexual assault and the impacts it can have on victims. 

Fourth-year acting major Braden Michael attended the event to support his friend who was in “Daredevil on the Rocks” and stated that he had no expectations walking in.

“I didn’t really know what it (the event) was about,” Michael said. “It was good for a slightly shorter attention span on a Friday night to have five different ones (plays) and be enthused with each one.” 

Publicized via social media, the festival provided a unique outlet to let creativity flow and for students to put original works out there to add to their professional resumes. To prolong the experience that students gain by participating, Novak hopes to hold annual Titan Playwrights Festivals in the future.

“The plan is for it to be a continuing thing every year,” Novak said. “At the very least we’ll repeat the 10-minute play production that we did tonight. I would love if down the line, the playwright’s festival could broaden and include stage readings of longer form.”