Exploring Extracurriculars Students reflect and share about their on and off-campus extracurricular activities, which include clubs, sports, and theater. WORDS and ART by DIONNE PETERSON
Katherine Ball ‘23 Q. What extracurricular activity are you involved in currently? A. Acting at Lights Up! Theater company. Q. How long have you been doing this? A. Four years, specifically at this theater company. Q. How were you initially drawn to the acting program? A. I was in a production of “Les Mis(érables),” and one of my friends there founded a new theater company. I decided to give it a shot, and it was awesome. Q. What’s your favorite thing about acting? A. Definitely the people. It’s just the most weird, amazing, crazy mix of people, and just getting to come back year after year and see people I already know and meet new friends is really fun. Also being able to see it all come together after months of rehearsal is pretty cool.
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Q. If you have taken a theater program at school, how does it differ from the one you are taking currently? A. I think the school play can sometimes face limitations caused by the need to condense rehearsals into one period, but the school musical is very similar to the ones I do outside of school, because rehearsals are after school. A benefit of doing a program outside of school is that it can have a bigger pool of people to draw from than
Laguna (because Laguna is rather small) and also allows for a longer rehearsal process that is not restricted by one semester. Q. Has acting helped you in opening up new pathways? A. It provides a safe space for improving at acting, which can sometimes feel difficult and embarrassing and weird, and really lets you get comfortable with those parts of acting.
Molly Newell ‘22 Q. What extracurricular activity are you involved in currently? A. I am part of the Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI) committee. Q. How long have you been a part of DEI? A. Ursula Chan officially created the committee this year, so I have been part of it since then. Q. How were you initially drawn to the committee? A. I think at Laguna, there was a lack of diversity, and there were a lot of people having conversations about minorities. I think it is important to educate everyone since we are so privileged at Laguna and in a bubble. Q. What is your favorite part about the DEI committee? A. We are planning a movie night for Black History Month, and that’s going to be really exciting, because we are going to watch “Black Panther” and include a discussion about it, which is important to talk about race in film and representation. thefourthestate.net
