State champion Rock Hill High drama team hopes to clinch a national championship
Jaden Erickson knew he had to work alongside his teammates on the football field to make a great play.
The 16-year-old now knows he has to work with another type of team to make a great play.
He has shifted from stadium lights to stage lights.
Erickson is a member of a thespian team from Rock Hill High School who won the state theater competition last November.
And now they hope to clench another championship at a national conference in Kentucky. The group will compete at the Southeastern Theater Conference March 1-5. They will compete with teams from North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia and Florida.
The Rock Hill High School drama program took to the stage last fall at the South Carolina Theater Association competition, said drama teacher and theater director Stephanie Daniels.
The Rock Hill High cast won first place with its performance of “Parallel Lives.”
The state championship cast included: Gabriella Daniels, Laura Grace Dhillon, Chloe Newport and Meridee Ritzer. The crew included: Aidan Lee, Uli Galindo, Jasmine Butler, Ariale Figueroa, and Jaden Erickson.
Dhillon won Best Actress and Daniels and Newport also received awards.
“It’s very rare that they recognize every single person in your show,” Daniels said.
Most of the other competitors were from the larger schools in South Carolina, Daniels said. All three high schools in Rock Hill competed. South Pointe finished eighth.
The students have rehearsed for several hours every day after school for six weeks to prepare for the big gig in Kentucky.
Creating bonds with teammates
Erickson said he sees similarities between football and theater. There’s the idea that both take mental and physical strength, and both are very emotional.
“It’s a very emotional thing and it’s what creates the biggest bonds between us, and theater has those big moments, like when we are about to go on stage for a big competition,” he said. “It’s those emotions and those talks that are what brings us so much closer to each other.”
And there’s the teamwork.
“You know you can be a star player, but without a team, without the person beside you giving it their all, the team won’t ever be great,” he said.
Erickson was an offensive lineman on the football team until ninth-grade. He saw a play and presented the idea to his parents that he would pursue his newly-minted passion to be a movie star. That meant he’d quit football.
“I came to my parents and I was like, what should I do?” Erickson said. “And they said do what your heart tells you to do.”
Erickson hung up his football jersey and headed to drama practice.
“I have always been outgoing, but I have never been the person to perform in front of other people,” he said.Some of his favorite roles include playing Elvis and a part in “Schoolhouse Rock!’s ‘Conjunction Junction.’” He’s goal is television and movies.
Dhillon also a troupe standout
Laura Grace Dhillon, 18, calls her cast mates her brothers and sisters.
“You’re so vulnerable onstage doing these things, you know, being someone else,” she said. “And so off-stage, you kind of have that relationship with those same people that are doing the same thing.”
Dhillon began acting when she was 4 and “like two feet tall,” she said. She attended a summer camp. She also tagged along with her mom who was involved with the Rock Hill Community Theater, she said. She started doing shows when she was in seventh grade.
“I have always been in love with theater,” she said.
The tall senior with long, brown hair moved with her family to Shanghai, China, when she was younger and continued her love of acting there with a theater program at an international school, she said.
She attended Westminster Catawba Christian School and took a summer program with Daniels before attending Rock Hill High.
“I kind of just knew instinctively that it was going to be like a new family for me,” said the senior, who also performs with Rock Hill Theater.
Dhillon, who is the drama club president, said arts programs are a way students can hone their creativity.
“It’s also just a place where you can try new things and fail, and learn about yourself and others,” she said. “And it’s just really an outlet that is just amazing to bring students together who would otherwise, you know, wouldn’t meet each other.”
Dhillon said acting is a good medium to tell someone else’s story, with no limitations.
“It can really touch people,” she said. “Not only when I get onstage am I, like, revived because it just does that to me, but it can touch anybody else who is in the audience.”
Dhillon said she will study acting when she starts a bachelor of fine arts program at New York University in the fall and said she wants to perform in film and television.
Bragging on young stars
The 2022-2023 school year is Daniels’ 30th year teaching and she has taken students to competitions for 28 years, with the program attending about 10 South Carolina Theater Association competitions, she said. Daniels has taught at Rock Hill High for 19 years.
The students perform a play every fall.
“I think the students get a lot out of going to competitions because they get to see students perform from around the state and they get to make friends with other drama kids,” Daniels said.
This year, the team will again perform “Parallel Lives”, which has a cast of girls. At the state competition, judges lauded all of the Rock Hill High girls who were in the show, which is rare, Daniels said.
Daniels said the actors have 45 minutes to perform. They are judged on characterization, the story line, the plot, ensemble work and others categories.
“Really they are looking for the acting skills of the students and the directing,” she said.
Daniels likes to brag on her young stars.
She said two Rock Hill High graduates are involved in the University of South Carolina theater program.
“A lot of kids do this for fun and they might pick up a couple of college classes,” Daniels said. “I have had kids come back and say ‘I’m so far ahead of a lot of people in my theater class because of the stuff I’ve learned in your program.’ So it makes me feel good.”
Despite the price tag of $550 per student for this week’s competition, which the students raised themselves through fundraising, going to a competition is worth it, Daniels said.
“It’s an honor to represent your state,” she said.
This story was originally published March 1, 2023 at 2:02 PM.
