Being able to play numerous instruments and taking part in several different theater programs, Amelia Mroczkowski, Div. 451, has proven her love for the arts.
When she was younger, Mroczkowski would hear her dad play the piano and started trying to play too.
“I would try and copy what he would do,” she said. “But I found more fun in making up my own stuff.”
Mroczkowski began playing the piano at eight years old, focusing mostly on classical music. As for acting, she said it just comes to her naturally, even though she does not know how.
She takes multiple music classes at Lane, including Advanced Mixed Choir and Sound Engineering. Outside of school, she takes theory and performance tests at Roosevelt University through a program called Achievement in Music. She is also a part of an ensemble at American Theater Company that puts on musicals.
“I work with some really cool people like PJ Paparelli,” she said. “He wrote Columbinus, which is a documentary play about the Columbine shooting.”
One event that confirmed her desire to pursue theater was when her ensemble put on a play called People’s Town, based on the Jonestown Massacre of 1978. Before beginning rehearsal for the play, the ensemeble spent a week in San Francisco researching and interviewing survivors of the massacre.
An artist who Mroczkowski especially admires is Kathleen Hanna, a signer and feminist activist.
“I know I can rant about feminism a lot,” she said. “But Kathleen Hanna is a musician from ‘the riot grrrl era’ of the 1990s. She is just [an all-around] cool person.”
Mroczkowski plans to go to school for acting. She has finished her final auditions for schools and has already been accepted to her second choice, UIC. She still is hoping to be accepted to Sarah Lawrence College, her first choice. Regardless of where she ends up studying, Mroczkowski’s love for music and theater will not change.
