S taging C hange l e i r O e n e l r A y b n a i t s i r K h t e b a z i l E n o e l fi o r AP The lights dim down, leaving the theater in almost pitch black darkness, with an insignificant amount of light coming only from the lights-and-sound booth in the back of the room. Shushes are heard, and silence spreads through the whole theater. An announcement comes on, requesting that the audience take a moment to silence their phones to avoid any ringtones disrupting the performance. In the next few seconds, hundreds of phones are brought out, illuminating the theater much like the stars illuminate the night sky. The “stars” begin to disappear as soon as they are
silenced. This production of “Chasing Charming” is about to begin. Curtains closed, the audience sits quietly and eagerly, anticipating the start of the production being put on by Los Altos High School’s Broken Box Theater Company. The curtains part, and the lights highlight key parts of the stage. A few actors come onstage and start the scene off. Among these actors is a tall girl, who is none other than Elizabeth Anne Kristian. Closely observing her from the audience, I can see that she is wearing a purple and lilac dress. Upon closer inspection, I notice that she is holding a magic wand, and wearing fairy
wings, allowing me to safely infer that she is portraying a fairy godmother, who is often the saving grace in fairytales, rescuing characters from tough situations and dull realities. As she delivers her lines, it becomes evident that she is not simply acting like a fairy godmother. In that moment, on that stage, she is a fairy godmother. Elizabeth has always possessed a certain talent for performing arts; she accredits both of her parents for encouraging her to get into the arts at an early age. When she was in kindergarten, her parents also encouraged her to join the Girl Scouts, and through the years, it has helped instill numerous positive qualities and skills in her over the years.
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“At its heart, I think acting is a craft. It’s something you build and it’s something you develop and it’s something you create.” ~Elizabeth Kristian
She started off as a Girl Scout Brownie when she joined in kindergarten, and she is now a Girl Scouts Ambassador, which is the highest rank for a Scout. Elizabeth is also currently involved with Broken Box Theater Company and the Main Street Singers at Los Altos High School. As a senior, Elizabeth is currently among many teenagers currently applying to college. The very essence of competition is in the air, as students across the country jockey for their position in higher education. This is the time of year when extracurricular activities seem to matter more than ever to students, and although Elizabeth herself is hoping that the time she’s spent with certain extracurricular activities will pay off during the application process, she knows that investing much of her time being involved in those extracurriculars has already helped her immensely, and will continue to benefit her long after she exits high school. After being involved in Girl Scouts, Main Street, Broken Box, and slam poetry, she has acquired various skills that have helped her throughout her high school ca-
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reer. She feels that it is now time for her to take those skills that have helped her these past few years, and use them as tools in order to help others. In a country still heavily plagued by various social issues such as sexism, classism, and homophobia, she plans on using the skills she’s learned through Girl Scouts, Broken Box, Main Street, and slam poetry to educate and ultimately change the way people look at these issues. Annaka Olson, Elizabeth’s long-time friend and fellow Girl Scout, reflects back on an obscurely memorable time when Elizabeth agreed to help her and her band out. One night at band practice, Annaka had an idea to bring in another person to play a part that she felt her band was currently lacking. Although the band already had guitar, drums, bass, and vocals, something was missing. But what was it? An accordion, of course. Feeling that an accordion player was necessary in order to make band practice more enjoyable and to experiment with a new sound, she enlisted Elizabeth’s help. Despite having virtually no real experi-
ence with an accordion, Elizabeth agreed to play the accordion for Annaka’s band for a few rehearsals. With a soulful laugh, Annaka expresses that Elizabeth “was just super up to it even though her accordion skills at that point were not really up to snuff ” and went on to say that it was an awesome experience to collaborate with her on that. “Elizabeth is up to try anything if she thinks that it will help other people,” she adds. Elizabeth is known for helping people in a myriad of ways. Playing the accordion for Annaka’s band just so happens to be one of the most bizarre ways she’s helped someone. She is also known to take up volunteer opportuni-
ties around her community such as helping out at soup kitchens, helping at libraries, and organizing book drives for kids who are less fortunate. She also helps the people around her in the way that she treats them. Annaka describes that “she has a very motherly attitude towards everyone she comes in contact with which is kinda weird to think about somebody your own age acting motherly towards you but she’s just a very caring person,” and that she “is a very positive person around other people and tries to lift the people around her.” I ask Elizabeth’s fellow Broken Box member, Cayley Ho, what it would be like without Elizabeth in Broken Box. She expresses, “we would lose so much
personality and put-togetherness because I think she ties a lot of the members of the group together.” I ask Elizabeth how she reacts when she notices that one of her peers is faced with an obstacle. She replies, “I am all about the whole positive reinforcement thing,” and elaborates, “I just try to build people up as much as possible because you can’t really get anything done if you don’t have confidence in yourself and you don’t have faith in your own potential to do something. Nothing else can go forward from there.” But she reveals, “I think that there’s too much positive reinforcement without any purpose.” So she makes it a point to always offer positive reinforce-
ment with purpose and real value, mostly in the form of constructive criticism. That way, she also helps the person target certain things they need to work on in order to really succeed at the task they are faced with. She adds, “You have some kind of potential in you and you really just need to work for that and live up to that.” This past summer, Elizabeth acted in a production of The Wizard of Oz, where she portrayed the cowardly lion. With a proud and reminiscent look, she expresses, “It’s a very funny character and the one thing I really like about playing funny characters is that it’s so selfless. Dramatic work is very important and there’s a lot of stuff you can learn from that kind of thing, but being
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a comedic character is just such a good thing because when you’re making other people happy, when you’re making other people laugh, there’s just such a sense of ‘I’m doing this all for you’ and there’s something very selfless about being funny and lifting people’s spirits and just creating that levity for people, especially with a classic show like The Wizard of Oz because everyone knows that show and just being that character, in some cases, there were some very young children in the audience and I was like “I am probably the first lion they’ve ever seen in their entire life.” As she illustrates her experience playing the cowardly lion, I cannot help but find it ironic that she, of all people, was chosen to play this character lacking in courage; because Elizabeth has always been one of the boldest and most courageous people I’ve ever known, ever since I met her in first grade. Although she greatly enjoys the entertaining side of performing arts, she has started to venture off and explore a more informative and outwardly educational side of performing arts. Elizabeth is very informed and educated on various topics such as feminism, gay rights, and social
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inequality, based on problems still plaguing our society today, and she has set out to make a difference. In her spare time, she enjoys writing poetry and attending poetry slams. In 2013, she participated in Los Altos High School’s own poetry slam and emerged one of the two winners of the event, after performing a poem of her own creation. She explains the kind of poetry she writes: “It’s a blend of what’s going on inside my own mind and what I see going on around me. I touch on social issues, and personal issues, and for me the ultimate goal with my poetry is to just sort of educate and create some kind of empathetic bond with the listeners. I’ve experimented
with a lot of different stuff, but it’s definitely socially aware.” She also explains that she is involved with an organization called Youth Speaks, which puts on open mics in the Bay Area and does a lot of education and advocacy. As her rather successful high school career nears its end, Elizabeth admits that she really doesn’t know what the future has in store for her. Wherever she’s headed to college, she has made it clear that she intends to study acting and where she can use it “as a tool for change” (Kristian). She hopes to not only make people more aware of these social issues, but also to elicit action to tackle the issues head-on. Upon being asked what she ultimately wants to change in this world, Elizabeth
definitively answers, “I want people to learn to be kinder, and to learn to be more humble, because there are so many issues in which we sort of forget that there’s anybody but us, and just to be able to teach people how to be better, more responsible human beings would really be the ultimate goal. ‘Cause it starts with people. Not necessarily politics or money or all that stuff; it starts with the people and I think that’s where I have to go first.”
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