The stage wakes up under the weight of heat so heavy it almost feels tangible. Floridians Cecilia and Randall wait beneath the unforgiving Louisiana sun, their eyes fixed on tracks that may never move them forward. 

When the bellow of a train cuts through the thick air, their “Journey West” rumbles to life.

Written by Cleveland State student Michael Anderson, “Journey West” started in July 2024 as a few scenes about cowboy characters. Nearly a year and a half later, those early ideas reached the stage for the first time on Feb. 6, when the play premiered at the Convergence Continuum Playwright’s Festival at the Liminis Theatre in Cleveland's Tremont district.

“Journey West”

Set across the southern United States between 1898-99, “Journey West” follows a group of characters as they navigate both the physical ruggedness of the terrain and the emotional complexities of one another. 

“‘Journey West’ is a nonconventional Western, it’s pseudodisguised as a Western,” said Anderson, a senior CSU English and political science double major. “It’s not what you would typically expect." 

Rather than centering on the bandit lifestyle or “the macho man,” Anderson explored themes rarely seen in the genre, such as “platonic friendships and nonplatonic friendships and how each of those looks and how they are interpreted.”

These themes are driven mainly through dialogue. The first act is conversation focused, with characters revealing themselves through verbal interactions rather than physical ones. 

In doing so, “Journey West” also pushes back against traditional Western gender dynamics, portraying femininity as determination and persistence rather than submission.

“The women in the show are really the characters that facilitate the action and change in the play,” said Dana Sumpter, director of “Journey West” and senior CSU theatre and dance major. 
 

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Manchester (left, played by Brayden Kuebler) and a bartender (right, played by Alfie Woodall) having a conversation in the saloon. (credit: Eva Wachala)

The Development

The script’s long road to production started in Anderson’s Introduction to Playwriting Workshop, where he was encouraged to continue working on “Journey West” during an independent study with Michael Geither, a CSU English professor, in the spring 2025 semester. 

“I was approached by (Geither) and asked to complete the play through an independent study,” Anderson said.

Sumpter joined the project during her Principles of Directing class, after being approached by Toby Vera Bercovici, professor and director of performance in CSU’s Department of Theatre and Dance, who had been in communication with Geither about the play.

“About halfway through my class I was asked to do staged reading for Mike’s independent study,” Sumpter said. “I said ‘Heck yeah, let’s do it,’ and I’ve been attached to the work since then.”

At the time of the staged reading in May 2025, “Journey West” was unfinished. Anderson completed what he described as “a lot of quick and deep edits,” including the final ending, two months before the festival.

Then, in December 2025, with the help of Geither, “Journey West” was accepted into the Convergence Continuum Playwright's Festival and set to run Feb. 6-7, 2026. 

This gave the duo only five weeks to cast, rehearse and prepare the entire play – production started almost immediately. 

The Creative Growth and Challenges

Throughout the hurried timeline, both Anderson and Sumpter encountered challenges that pushed them to grow while simultaneously discovering who they are as creatives. 

For Anderson, the biggest hurdle was learning to let go.

“Length is the biggest issue,” he said. “The challenge is getting over my attachment to some of the fluff.”

Even after cutting 25 pages, the play’s runtime still stretches between three and three and a half hours.

For Sumpter, who was directing a full-length production for the first time, the challenge was building a shared vision among a cast she was still getting to know.

“Getting everyone on the same page of what we wanted was challenging,” Sumpter said. “Making sure everyone knows what's going on, and when you don’t know actors personally, it's hard to know what to communicate and how to communicate to them.”

To overcome this hurdle, Sumpter leaned into what she knows best. As a self-described text-focused director, she centered her directorial debut on building relationships between the characters – both onstage and behind the scenes.

“I am the kind of creative person that is very text work focused,” she said. “I was really into, ‘What do the characters want, and how do they interact with each other?’”

One of her favorite methods of directing is what she calls “relationship dances,” a technique designed to move actors into the emotional core of their roles. Working in pairs or small groups, actors stay in character while improvising the beginning, middle and end of their characters’ relationships.

This method allows for actors to learn each other’s boundaries and acting styles organically, and gets things flowing without the surface-level introductions.

“It’s moving through the timeline of what (character's) relationships are,” Sumpter explained. “A lot of the movement from the dances we carried through to play. It’s a physical language that we built. It’s just a really valuable way to learn about their characters.”

Developing these strong relationships helped support the cast and crew to fully produce “Journey West” in such a short amount of time – a culmination of nearly two years of work and a testament to the evolving creative identities of the students who brought it to life.

The Future of “Journey West”

While its debut weekend has passed, “Journey West” is far from finished. The show is slated to continue its run this summer at the Borderlight Festival, scheduled for July 2026.

Held in Cleveland’s Playhouse Square District, Borderlight Festival is a large-scale, multi-day performing arts event that invites artists from all around the world. The festival showcases original works ranging from full-length plays to extended monologues and dance performances, offering space for stories that often fall outside traditional theatre programming.

“It’s a place for shared lived experiences; it’s a good experience for students to create their own art,” Sumpter said. “Borderlight shows art that would not otherwise have a platform.”

For “Journey West,” the festival is the next stop in its journey that continues to evolve, showcasing the unconventional Western across new stages and into a wider creative community.