Full Sail Stories

“I went to my classmates and I was like, ‘Hey, guys. I've got this crazy idea we've never done before. You want to help me?’” recalls David Farosh, a recent graduate of Full Sail's Show Production (now called Live Event Production) degree program.

The crazy idea? To produce the first musical ever held on campus and have his fellow students involved throughout.

A Full Sail student at the time of the production, David chose the Broadway hit Into the Woods, which follows characters from Grimms’ Fairy Tales like Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Cinderella in a new retelling, intertwining their stories. David was a theater technician in high school and wanted to bring theater to Full Sail ever since he enrolled. Plans started coming together in October 2024, auditions began the next April, and after eight straight weeks of rehearsals, David’s once outlandish idea became reality this past June.

“My classmates were very kind to jump in and help,” David says. The team of more than 40 cast and crew – mostly from the Live Event Production and Film degree programs – worked on hair and makeup, costume design, lighting, sound, music, props, and more. Students from many other degree programs auditioned to perform in the musical, including many from the improv club.

The musical was held at the Full Sail University Orlando Health Fortress. The venue was built as an esports arena, not a theater, so David had to tweak aspects of the production to make it fit the unconventional space. He decided to make it a theater-in-the-round, with a stage on both sides of the room as well as in the center, and the audience seated in semi-circles facing the middle of the makeshift theater so they could easily see everything. He also manipulated the lighting to focus the audience on one part of the stage so another part could be changed for the next scene.

“I wore many hats in the show. I acted as the executive producer and also directed the production,” David says. “I also portrayed the role of the witch in the show, and I was the production manager because, as a Live Event Production student, that's one of the jobs I'm a little bit more keyed into... I really wanted to see just how far I could push myself.”

On opening night, the Fortress was packed with more than 200 audience members, including faculty and friends and family members of the cast and crew, excited to see the students’ hard work pay off.

As the performers and production crew brought the fairytales to life, the audience laughed, cried, sat in suspense, and cheered as the curtain closed.

The production served as David’s and his fellow Live Event Production classmates' final project for their degrees. It’s a longstanding tradition for grads of that degree program to make production posters, so they chose Into the Woods, created a poster, signed it like Broadway stars, and hung it in the halls of Full Sail Live 1 with pride.

Many of David’s instructors supported him in his endeavor, such as Corbett Compel, Course Director and Department Chair of Lighting & Visual Productions for the Live Event Production degree program.

“I was the Faculty Advisor for the project and largely coordinated resources and oversaw the students,” Corbett shares. “It was great to see students from so many different degree programs come together to create a special production. The dedication and teamwork they all had were truly impressive.

“David was the driving force behind the show,” he continues. “He took every ‘no’ not as a stop, but as a detour to finding a way that worked. He had exceptional leadership skills to bring so many people together to create a live theater show at Full Sail – something that had never been done before.”

Along with directing the university’s first on-campus musical production, David has bigger aspirations.

“My goal was for it to spark something larger, whether that be more student collaboration, larger projects, or just more theater on campus in general. And I think with each future production, we're building stones to a great castle that will showcase the excellent students at Full Sail.”