Sitting on a quaint stool and surrounded by figures shrouded in shadow, the stage lights illuminated senior Kat Aldrete as they delivered the foreboding and carefully rehearsed opening lines of this year’s November SHS drama production “Radium Girls.” Starring as the lead character Grace Fryer, Aldrete, who identifies as nonbinary, impressed the crowd with a series of moving performances that marked their last major high school play production.
“Radium Girls” marks the 11th drama production they have acted in, including student-directed productions. Having been part of the drama program since freshman year, theater has become crucial to Aldrete’s high school life.
Aldrete’s acting career started from humble roots — playing as one of Ursala’s tentacles in a second-grade rendition of “The Little Mermaid.” Since then, Aldrete had taken part in shows on and off through elementary and middle school, until finally deciding to dedicate themselves to the performing arts.
Now in their senior year, Aldrete has participated in every major school drama play and musical production except one in 2021. Thanks to substantial talent in both vocals and acting, they have been able to shine in all their roles, many of which included solo songs and long monologues.
Some of their notable roles include their freshman year casting as Fruma-Sarah, a challenging role in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof.” This role required a strong singer for expressive, show-stopping scenes. In sophomore year, Aldrete played Bill from the musical “Mamma Mia!” That same year, they played the character Inez in a student production called “No Exit.” Despite being a largely unknown production, it remains one of their most memorable drama experiences for its unique storyline and the cast members and crew they worked with.
Now, after playing the lead role of Grace Fryer in “Radium Girls,” they plan to perform in the spring musical “The Little Mermaid,” and come full circle.
In addition to acting in “Radium Girls,” they assisted in producing it. In “Radium Girls,” Aldrete acted as assistant director, working alongside drama teacher Benjamin Brotzman and filling in for him when he wasn’t present at a rehearsal. Of the 26 scenes in the play, Aldrete directed a little under half and blocked those scenes themselves, planning stage directions and movements of the actors on stage.
“There’s a lot of different components, but I view it as sort of a collaborative process between the director and the actors,” Aldrete said while describing the relationship between their two roles. “The director gives you a blueprint or an outline, and then the actor fills in all the missing gaps and makes the character feel like a real person in that moment.”
As a member of the drama department, Aldrete has won several end-of-year awards for acting: “Best Supporting Actor in a Spring Musical” award for their role as Fruma-Sarah and “Best Actor in a Student Production” for their role as Inez.
The summer after their junior year, Aldrete and the drama department traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland, with the opportunity to perform at the Festival Fringe — an international festival that takes place in 60 different countries every August — as one of just 13 high schools in the world to perform there.
Aldrete also won a “Best Play Script” award from the New Works Festival, for their play “Yume” that they wrote during the drama class’s playwriting unit. As a winning script, the New Works Festival picked a professional director and actors to perform it.
“I just handed the script in, and I let other people do the work, which was cool to see. I was so happy and impressed at how they ended up [performing the play],” Aldrete said.
In their Drama 4 Honors class, Aldrete is directing the play “Morning Sun,” originally written by British-Irish playwright Simon Stephens. The play narrates the life of Charley from beginning to end as she lays in her deathbed, reflecting on her life through scenes where her, her daughter and her mother grapple with their strained relationship. This play will cast fellow students from the school drama program and will be performed Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 at 7 p.m. in the Thermond Drama Center.
Aldrete is also a part of the International Thespian Society (ITS), an honor society for devoted theater arts students who qualify with a certain amount of hours dedicated to the craft. The ITS hosts theater competitions, large gatherings of high school and college-age “thespians” — referring to student actors — as well as the California Thespian Festival.
However, Aldrete acknowledges the hardships that come with pursuing a career in theater, where even the best actors will often struggle to secure roles. In college, Aldrete plans to study psychology but hopes to keep participating in drama recreationally for the rest of their life.
Although time-consuming, drama allows Aldrete to connect with the characters in the script.
“It’s empathy, and imagining yourself as someone else and imagining how they’re feeling,” Aldrete said. “It’s melodramatic, but it’s like you are becoming a different person. Feeling who that person is — both projecting yourself onto the character and projecting the character onto you — is a deep thing for me.”
