Victoria Larson, sophomore, is very invested in the theater world at school. She moved here from California at age 5 with her mother, 2 brothers, and sister. Her first memory of Tucson is going to the Gaslight Theater and watching a show that amazed her. Ever since then, she has loved it, but didn’t get into it until 6th grade. She doesn’t remember doing an actual play in 6th grade, but once she got to 7th they had a big show. After that, 8th grade hit, but so did Covid. Theater, of course, wasn’t the same in zoom classes, but that didn’t stop her from joining in high school.

Fast forward to this school year, Victoria suffered the horrific loss of her mother, something no one this young should have to go through.  This happened very shortly before a show that her theater group was performing, so after taking a week off of school, she came back to see that everyone had already prepared for the upcoming play. But instead of giving up, she immersed herself in the play and worked extra hard, deciding that she wanted to catch up and get herself ready in time for the show, and that’s exactly what she did. All of this dedication was cathartic and ended up being really good for her because it was a distraction from everything going on at home.

After a couple of months, Victoria got the chance to go to SAFT for the first time, which is a theater competition at the U of A where many different groups of people choose what category they want to compete under. The options include: monologue, singing musicals, tech showoffs, etc. She chose to do 2 monologue, receiving a much-deserved superior award for them.

It was her first time and Victoria was very nervous going into it, especially having the vice president of theater there with her. She was worried that everyone was going to do much better than her, but after it was over and the nerves were gone, she realized that she did an amazing job and had a lot of fun overall.

Now that SAFT is over, the entire theater at school performed a play this past Friday and Saturday called Twisted Tales. Victoria played a witch named Raisin and she said that she was “very prominent in the 2nd act of the show.” It was an exciting and enjoyable show for everyone that went and I’m sure the whole school is looking forward to whatever the theater decides to show us next!