“We should write a musical,” Asher Speck told Gabe Borken when they met at summer orientation in 2023.

Two and a half years later, this playwright duo is presenting their first full-length musical comedy, “Duck, Duck, Gay Duck,” as a part of Drake University Theatre Arts’ mainstage season. 

“Duck, Duck, Gay Duck,” also directed by juniors Borken and Speck, follows a duck named Gay through his last week in high school. When Gay is paired with his crush, Dick, for a school project, the school diving team tries to get between them — and Gay makes a choice that changes his life forever. 

“What are the odds that you go into college and one of the first people you ever meet is someone that is not only willing to write a musical with you, but a musical that ultimately means so much to both of you?” Speck said.

Much of the show is drawn from Borken and Speck’s college experiences, exploring themes of acceptance, queerness and family.

“Gay is kind of both of us our freshman year, where he’s in school and he feels afraid of not being accepted. He doesn’t know if his family or anyone around him is going to accept him,” Speck said. “Looking back on that now, seeing where we are, and obviously, we have each other and we have such a strong community around us.”

Gay’s relationship with his parents is central to the show, and this dynamic is based on Speck’s experience with coming out to his family. Speck said his mom had a hard time with it because she was worried about how other people would treat him.

“It’s not that [Gay’s parents] don’t love their son, but it’s that they’re scared of what other ducks, in this case, will think or do, or what could happen because of that,” Speck said.

The name of the show came before anything else. Borken is originally from Minnesota, and the two were discussing his home state’s take on Duck, Duck, Goose during a technical rehearsal in fall 2023.

“At some point, one of us must have made a joke that [was] something along the lines of ‘Duck, Duck, Gray Duck — more like ‘Duck, Duck, Gay Duck,’” Borken said. “I guess Asher pulled out his notebook and wrote it down.”

Borken and Speck began writing the script within the next week. Through hundreds of pages of writing and hours of voice memos, they built out a plot, characters and songs.

“Duck, Duck, Gay Duck” was first performed by Drake Theatre People as a staged reading on March 8, 2025.

“The staged reading gave us a lot more confidence in what we were doing, because there were so many people that came up to us afterwards and told us they want to see it on stage,” Speck said.

“People were singing our songs in the hallway,” Borken added.

Seeing their work performed also helped the pair see what edits they needed to make for the next draft.

Erik Meixelsperger, the head of Drake’s acting program, encouraged Borken and Speck to submit “Duck, Duck, Gay Duck” for the annual Student Theatre Productions. These student-directed works are typically one-act plays, so they didn’t expect their full-length musical to be selected.

When the 2025-2026 mainstage season was announced, “Duck, Duck, Gay Duck” was among the lineup — and Borken and Speck would have the opportunity to direct the show they wrote.

Auditions for the entire season took place in August 2025, and Borken and Speck were able to choose who would originate these roles on the main stage. Borken was studying abroad in England during auditions and attended virtually, but Spech said this did not affect the casting as they “agreed on basically everything.”

Student Theatre Productions have a short four-week rehearsal process, so the “Duck, Duck, Gay Duck” cast attended music rehearsals at the end of the fall semester to learn the songs.

Borken and Speck have continued to develop the show’s script during the rehearsal process. 

“Lines have been changing, which is its own challenge, in its way, but also makes it so much more fun,” said senior Kurtis Nethington, who plays Dick. “It makes us feel a part of it, and like we have our own handprint on everything.”

Nethington has relied on his own experience to develop the character of Dick, whom he describes as the “jock of the town.”

“[Dick] is a lot of me, and he’s a lot of who I knew in high school and who I wanted to be,” Nethington said. “It’s almost a way of rewriting my senior year and rewriting who I could have been, … which is very full circle for me.”

Nethington and Speck say telling stories about queer joy and love is especially important in today’s world. According to Out Leadership’s 2025 State LGBTQ+ Business Climate Index, Iowa is one of the least welcoming states for LGBTQ+ individuals in the Midwest. In last year’s legislative session, a bill removing gender identity as a protected class was signed into Iowa law.

“This is a topic that we have discussed a lot in our cast — how art can be used for advocacy, and art can also be used simply to share joy,” Nethington said. “This specific show does both. That is very important in the world that we are living in right now, and it’s not something that any of our cast takes lightly in any way.”

This is just the beginning for “Duck, Duck, Gay Duck” and Borken and Speck as a writing duo. This weekend’s run is the eighth draft of the script, and the two hope there will be many more versions performed on more stages.

Audiences can look forward to humor, heart and a story that everyone can relate to, according to Nethington.

“What we’ve heard several times this week, and I think this sums it up, is, ‘I did not expect to cry multiple times over gay ducks,’” Speck said.

Showings of “Duck, Duck, Gay Duck” and the other student-directed production, “Thompson’s Luck,” are at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 20 and 21 and 2 p.m. on Feb. 22 in the Coleman Studio Theatre. Tickets can be purchased online or at the Fine Arts Center box office.