This is Final Strike Collaborative

“The magic of the theatre is that it’s a collaborative art.” - Stephen Sondheim

In 2019, Laicey Gibby-Brown was riding the subway back to her NYC apartment after working Clueless: The Musical at Signature Theater. Beside her were old wooden slabs from what used to be Cher’s school bench that Laicey had just taken out of a dumpster. Days later, they were a bookshelf in her bedroom.

Laicey had been in New York for about two years building a career as a theatrical carpenter and stagehand. She says, “I was appalled at the large carbon footprint each show left behind. Dumpsters 30 feet long would overflow, and there would still be more than half of the set left to dismantle.”

She spoke to direct supervisors onsite about her concerns. “Everyone agreed, but no one had the power to do anything. Production plans are laid forth by institutions. They have the money, so they decide how to spend it. Throwing things away and starting fresh is cheaper and faster than paying people to process the materials and reuse them.”

After installing her new bookshelves, Laicey took some discarded chairs too worn for the stage and gave them a facelift too. “Before I knew it,” she says, “my apartment was filled with materials I had scavenged. I became one of the people someone would tag on the ‘subwaycreatures’ Instagram page for how odd some of the cargo I carried home from work would be.”

The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic brought the everyday bustle of New York to a halt. Laicey began working at a testing site set up in tents on the asphalt of the Aqueduct Race Track in Queens, with lots of questions for the future. “I ended up meeting some

extraordinary people, from all walks of life, who reinforced my belief that no matter who you are, you can make a difference.”

So, she rented a studio space to store the growing backlog of theater pieces she had stowed away. She enlisted the help of friends Josh Leslierandal and Eric Camerer and, four months later, Final Strike Collaborative was born.

The first annual company retreat began as a planned camping trip among the founders and their friends. According to Laicey, “The destination was determined by the median driving point to where we were all living at the time, which turned out to be a rented-out horse stable in West Virginia. As we sat around the campfire, a day or so in, we realized so much of our conversation was revolving around Final Strike business, and instead of that being taxing, it was invigorating.”

From then on, a planned annual retreat for the remote collaborators has become “an intentional setting, to celebrate our past year's accomplishments, and focus our efforts towards unified goals for the next.” Each year the team incorporates workshops into the retreat, last year focusing on poetry, sewing, and tabletop roll play. 

Final Strike Collaborative's first retreat, horse stable style. Pictured left to right: Teko Dumoulin, Josh Leslierandal, Laicey Gibby-Brown, Karly Hasselfeld, and Eric Camerer.

Josh, Secretary and Production Manager, looks back on that time: “This started as, and continues to be, a passion project for everyone involved. We wouldn't be here doing what we do, and giving all we can, if we didn't care about this movement with our whole hearts.”

Director of Information Technology Eric Camerer recalls how nervous he was about obtaining the organization’s 501(c)(3) status, saying, “I spent so long looking over our documentation, making sure we were organized and prepared… I absolutely stressed over it way more than I had to,” though he admits it’s “definitely for the best that we kicked things off right, and having that knowledge makes opening branches in other states a synch.” Today, Final Strike Collaborative holds its nonprofit status in both New York and Ohio, and hopes to further expand within the theater community as our mission grows. 

Looking to the next five years, Josh sees nothing but potential for the organization. He says we are concerned with “keeping education at the forefront of our mission. If Final Strike's message is able to reach individuals across the country (even internationally) and inspires people to take up the mantle on their own to be the change they want to see, then I think we will have really reached the level we have always wanted to achieve.”

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Date Published: November 16th, 2025

Author: Madeleine Thompson