Whiz Kid: High School Actress Can Balance Everything

Name, age: Laura Nikolich, 17

School:

Achievement: Laura will perform her feature song from this year’s Southampton High School musical, , “Somewhere That’s Green,” at the Teeny Awards and is on her way to the University of Delaware for math education with a minor in theater.

Key to Awesomeness: Laura takes the stage whenever she can plus she balances her other activities with ease from the class co-president, to tennis player and varsity club president.

Laura has always been involved in theater and drama, inside and outside of school. This year, Laura not only played a lead role, Audry, in the high school play, Little Shop of Horrors, but was assistant director. She blocked scenes, telling people where to go and what to do, and choreographed a few of the numbers.

She said it was hard. “We had some days where I was there for my role and days where I blocked for other scenes.” Sometimes she was blocking for her own scenes so she would announce what she directed herself to do for that scene and follow through by doing the action.

Additionally, she was asked to sing her main song, “Somewhere That’s Green,” at the East End Teeny Awards, which is a high school awards ceremony for students involved in theater.

Currently, she is practicing to play Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz for Stages, an outside theater group. Usually practices are a couple hours three times a week, but since she is a lead she has to do extra weekend practices. This past weekend she had a seven-hour rehearsal.

Laura has a laundry list of activities she partakes in but her most noticeable include being co-president of her class, president of varsity club and president of the outing club. She’s a member of the National Honor Society and on the honor roll. She is also the only person in the high school to go to the New York State Council of Administration of Music Education for vocal performance.

“I have a calendar that’s really my universe," she said. "It’s just budgeting my time and knowing where to be and telling people things in advanced so things do not conflict.”

“She is very active and motivates the other members the become involved," said Vincent Mangano, her A.P. calculus teacher and the advisor of the varsity club. "She is extremely competitive, yet she is humble. I think she has the ability to get everyone around her to be a better person.”

She also wants to pursue math education at her top-choice school, Delaware University.  “She has great insight in mathematics," Mangano said. "With the skills that she has she will become an excellent math teacher.”

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