What NAHS Means To Me

North Attleboro High School, more than anything else, fosters growth.  The academic excellence the school instills in its students is self-evident, as seen by superb MCAS and AP scores year after year.  The varied athletic opportunities available at NAHS are also widely reported in local papers and visible across town on our fields and courts.  In addition to these well-known examples of student engagement, there are many other ways NAHS facilitates growth in its students, particularly through the myriad of clubs and organizations that encourage student involvement outside of their academic responsibilities. Whether it is Model Senate, Art Club, Math League, or the Building Bridges Gay-Straight Alliance, NAHS allows students to participate in activities that relate to their own unique interests and passions.   

 Among my many extracurricular activities, my involvement in the North Attleboro High School Theatre Company has been the most pivotal in my growth as a student, as a person, in the past four years.  My shy nature and difficulty interacting with new people made me initially tentative at the prospect of pursuing an art that forced me to perform for all eyes to see.  After some cajoling from friends, I began working with the company as a freshman.  What I found when I joined was an accepting, diligent, passionate group of closely-knit people.  The staff and students that invest their time and energy into theatre all welcomed me in with open arms, offering support, encouragement, and constructive criticism when it was needed.  With their help, I became a more confident actor and person, taking on roles ranging from an Italian nun to a grizzled old man to a brash general to a romantic Wall Street administrator.  The theatre company has helped me to improve my writing as I write out press releases for upcoming shows to distribute to local newspapers.  I have even become handy with a drill as I help to turn wooden flats and 2X4’s into elegant sets on Saturday mornings.   

An oft-repeated cliché among the members of the NAHSTC is that the company is a family.  Many clichés are rooted in fact, and I know for certain that this is one of them.  The support and encouragement among the students in the theatre company is profoundly apparent.  We help each other to memorize monologues, hammer in walls, and dim the lights.  We spend literally hundreds of hours working together, and many of us eventually log in enough hours on stage or doing technical work to be eligible for membership in the International Thespian Society.  Our devotion to the success of the company is also apparent through our elections of students to the Executive Board, which helps to choose field trips, organize fundraisers, and head the crews necessary to keep the group operating.  I have been fortunate enough to have been inducted into the ITS and elected as the president of the E-board by my peers for my senior year.   

High school is a place, and time, of growth.  Nowhere is this more apparent for me personally than when looking back on my time in theatre.  I remember walking sitting alone in the auditorium during auditions for the Fall Play and walking out of sheer nervousness before I would have to go onstage.  I remember playing an old wheelchair-bound Texan and a crooning lounge singer that same year during my first major role in the Spring Musical.  I remember stepping back and swelling with pride as I beheld to the massive two-story house that I helped to build after hours toiling on Saturdays alongside my cast-mates.  My transformations through the last four years are largely due to the immensely positive impact the company has had on me.  The lessons I have learned will resonate a lifetime and the friendships I have made will remain strong even after I graduate and leave the hallowed Cobb Theatre.  Little in my high school experience has been as satisfactory as pulling off a successful production as a member of our humble troupe and seeing and seeing an audience, even for a brief moment, become a part of our family.  I encourage anyone who wonders what North Attleboro High School provides its students to come by to a show.  We’ll be happy to show you what we’re capable of.  

-Eric Wuesthoff   

Class of 2015