^{Hatch was Aunt Loreli in the show “Something Extraordinary.” Courtesy | Kiley Hatch}

When junior Kiley Hatch adopted a “say yes to everything” attitude during her gap year between high school and college, she wasn’t expecting to land a full-time theater career. 

“I’ve always loved to write, and I’ve always loved to act,” Hatch said. “I ran a little theater camp starting when I was 15. When I was taking a gap year, I just said to myself, ‘I will not say no to anything that comes up because I have no idea what I’m doing during this time.”

Hatch said her first yes when she entered a radio playwriting competition in 2020 hosted by a Catholic startup called The Merry Beggars. Her play “I Do Like the Rain” follows the conversations that ensue after a young family is caught in traffic.

“I lost the contest,” Hatch said. “But I sent an email afterwards and said, ‘Hey, I really loved what I wrote. And I feel like it was the first thing that showed myself and who I am and where I came from. I never would have written without this contest, so thank you.’”

 Peter Aktison, the founder of the Merry Beggars, wrote back asking to produce her show.

Her play became the third episode in “The Quarantine Plays,” a series produced by The Merry Beggars.

While taking online classes from Belmont University, Hatch emailed Atkinson and was offered the opportunity to develop a children’s radio series. Six months into the project, a Chicago-based media company called Relevant Radio bought the program.

Suddenly, playwriting became Hatch’s full-time job. 

“That was crazy,” Hatch said. “I kind of stumbled into that. I just said yes to the right thing. And I’ve learned so much from that crazy process.”

Hatch spent two years working on her 21-part series for Relevant Radio called “On The Night Train.” It airs every Sunday evening on Relevant Radio networks across the nation.

“It’s about two kids who accidentally stow away on the Pullman night train in 1880, going across the United States on the newly completed transcontinental railroad,” Hatch said. “They soon realize that the train is being sabotaged, and their father is in charge of the train. They’ve got to figure out a way to save the train before a catastrophic wreck occurs.”

While working a full-time job and enrolling as a full-time theater student, Hatch has found support for her creative projects from James Brandon, chair and professor of theater. Hatch said Brandon allowed her to get credit for her work as an independent study. 

“A lot of our Hillsdale students are like this, where they want to do 12 different things, but the difference with Kiley is that she’s able to handle it,” Brandon said. “She’s mature, she’s organized, and she’s passionate. It’s worked out in such a way that she’s able to do what she needs to do professionally, but she’s also serious about her education here. And I’m trying to support her as much as possible.”

Hatch is taking a playwriting class this semester and is currently writing a play for her senior project that will be produced as a staged reading in 2024. The play is in conversation with Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” particularly examining the character of Miranda.

“For our senior projects there is a classroom component and there’s a public component,” Brandon said. “For a playwright, we insist that the final product have a staged reading. She’ll have the summer to do edits and make changes suggested by the professor, so that when we return in the fall, we will be able to schedule a staged reading of her senior project as part of our theatrical season. I’ll be eager to see what she does with it.”

Hatch also runs a theater company, Embers Theatre Co. in her hometown of Arlington, Virginia. The company offers summer camps and traveling shows for the surrounding community, making shows portable with a trailer, a fold-out stage, and a speaker system. 

“In 2021 I was sick of the fact that in D.C., and Northern Virginia, there were theaters still canceled,” Hatch said. “So I went and bought a trailer, and my boyfriend and I wrote a show. We cast nine high schoolers and toured to eight different counties just in peoples’ backyards or a parish parking lot.” 

Since transferring to Hillsdale College, Hatch has joined The Kehoe Family Initiative for Entrepreneurial Excellence to further develop her business under the program and additional guidance of Ken Koopmans.

“She is passionate, organized, motivated, and just very positive. She takes initiative,” Koopmans said. “She’s going to do well, and she’s going to succeed because she has experience in the industry.” 

But Hatch is in no rush for the future. She’s just enjoying the path there. 

“Playwriting is not about inspiration. It’s about the process,” Hatch said. “It’s about rewriting. It’s about spending time on the project, even when you don’t feel like it. It’s just the fact that you keep showing up, and that’s what makes you a writer. I’m allowing each project to be part of my process of becoming.”