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Student Spotlight: Justin Borak

Justin Borak headshotName: Justin Borak

Class Rank: Masters Candidate

Major and Minor: Acting

Hometown: Cleveland, OH

Why did you choose to attend WVU? 
I knew that I could spend time focusing on my writing as well as acting a performance while here. No other school gave me that opportunity.

What do you like about your major and your WVU experience? 
I love my acting cohort, the rest of the grads have become my family and the reason I love coming to school every day.

Community garden program booklet overlooking a stage with students
What advice would you give to prospective students considering attending WVU's College of Creative Arts? 
Read read read! If you’re an acting student, make sure you are constantly reading plays you haven’t read before. Half of our job is educating ourselves on the history and current place of our industry and an easy way to do that is by reading historically famous plays or plays that are being written right now.

Have you recently received any awards or scholarships? Have you recently participated in any competitions, productions, performances or exhibitions?
I have been a comedy writer for 7 years but I started my playwriting journey last year after receiving the Broadway Licensing New Works Grant and writing the play, A Writer’s Room. After that getting some attention from the publishers over at Playscripts (a TYA subsidiary of Broadway Licensing), I got the opportunity to sign on and write a few plays for high schoolers. The first of which, Community Garden, premiered through West Virginia Public Theatre and is being published at the end of December, 2022.
Students working together on stage