In just a few short years, senior Stella Weinberg has emerged as a breakout star of Rio’s theater program. In theater almost all day, she participates in a whopping four periods of theater: two drama classes, technical theater, and reader’s theater. In order to enroll in such a heavy theater workload, Weinberg completed all her required classes early on and also takes online classes. Weinberg said she has been interested in acting since she was two or three years old.

In her first role in technical theater, Weinberg actually played a male character, Archibald, in Badams, which she recalls was difficult due to the male voice and wig she had to wear. Despite the challenges, playing the role helped her realize that the range of characters she could embody was very vast.

Additionally, the theater program has helped her overcome other adversity. “Honestly, being in theater just makes me a lot more comfortable with talking to other people and doing interviews [and] public speaking, which I was always really bad at; once I got into theater, it made it a lot easier,” she said.

Furthermore, she has had to come up with creative ways to memorize her lines. “Definitely I’m not the best at memorizing things,” she said. “I’ll put [the lines] into a song because I can memorize songs really well, so I’ll sing it over and over again.”

Recently, Weinberg was Mrs. Westerna in the production of Dracula, which she enjoyed. “That was a fun character because it was a lot more dramatic,” she said. “It really let me explore the dramatic side of my acting, more than the comedy side.”

Participating in technical theater has allowed her to direct theater productions, too, which has now become one of her main interests. She also directs short films, including one of her latest projects, Forbidden Love, in Mr. Bearson’s class. Weinberg recently directed a short drama film and prepared work for a Rio showcase. While Weinberg prefers directing films, she finds joy acting in both films and theater.

Weinberg plans to continue her theater success in her career. “I definitely want to go into acting and directing,” she said. “I’m going to major in film directing and minor in theater acting, so I think doing that [will help] get a better understanding for each job, so when I work in a profession of actor or director, then I can really understand the other roles.”

Talking about musical influences, Weinberg said “I was a dancer and I danced all the way until I was thirteen, so I always have worked with music. I can’t sing, but I think working with a beat of music is always very beneficial.” She has also made a short film with no words and just a song.

Before theater, Weinberg participated in a huge variety of sports, such as rowing, basketball, soccer, swim, tennis, and basketball. Unfortunately, she fractured her spine and then switched to theater.

“I fractured my spine my freshman year when I was rowing,” she said. “So that actually really helped me start acting, because I couldn’t really get up and do a lot of things. I got more into watching films and analyzing them and decided that that’s what I wanted to do when I grew up.”

She has always loved dance and styling her friends. She participated in dance until she was thirteen and became too busy to continue. She did jazz, tap, ballet, hip-hop, and modern contemporary. Outside of school, Weinberg works at a spin studio, which is where people ride stationary bikes to music for a cardio-driven workout.

In addition, she is a personal trainer and makes up workouts for her clients.