Let me take you back to the closing night of LHS’s 2018 musical, Footloose. As actors and techies alike gather around for the last circle up (a pre-show warm-up for all members of the show), a bittersweet moment is shared. Memories of past and present shows flood back to everybody in the circle. For a senior, scanning each face and detail of the room is a final look at who and what you’re leaving behind. It’s practically a given that tears will fall. Now that the final performances are over, it’s time for those seniors to look into the bright future ahead of them; the senior techies tell us what they plan to do after high school, and share a few memories from their time at Linganore.

Abby Maloid said taking part in visual arts and theater has helped her express herself, and that she wants to continue participating in the arts during college. After Linganore, Maloid plans to continue her studies at Towson University and work towards getting a Bachelors of Fine Arts degree in Graphic Design or Illustration.

As a parting piece of advice, she wants to encourage all underclassmen to take advantage of as many after school activities as possible. ¨I wasn’t into theater until high school, and it’s changed my life,¨ she says.

Maloid participated in both the GSA and NAHS at Linganore. She was also head of Footloose makeup and a member of the show’s run crew. 

Rozmia Fattah was Right Winghead (overseer of the right wing; coordinates with sound, lighting, run crew, and actors to help the show run smoothly) in Footloose.  She has also held other theatrical titles in past shows, such as Left Winghead and Stage Manager.

She is also a part of the International Thespian Society. Although it’s a tremendous workload, Fattah says she still enjoys being “part of a team that puts on something special.¨ She would like to encourage new students to ¨take a moment to enjoy the present, even if high school may suck.¨

Fattah says that she’ll miss the great friends she’s made in her years at Linganore when she moves on to pursue a higher education at George Washington University. There, she plans to major in mathematics, as well as participate in theater and math-based clubs on the side.

Footloose Stage Manager, Shayden Jamison, wants to encourage all underclassmen to ¨Join all the clubs all the clubs and extracurricular activities you’re thinking of because [if you don’t,] you will regret it later.¨ For Jamison, theater was a way of forming new friendships and seeing his personal ideas come to life before his eyes. With this, he says he’ll miss the Linganore theater department dearly.

Jamison, in his time at Linganore, has held titles in past shows such as Tech Historian, Props Manager, and Winghead. In 2018, he was the Co-president of the Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA), and Co-Leader of the Drama Club.

Jamison wants to follow similar themes with his studies in college, and participate in local theater, music, and LGBT groups near whichever school he attends. Although not completely decided yet, he plans on going to an arts-based college in New York or Pennsylvania to study Stage Management and Communications.

Another techie senior is Katie Thomas. Not only was she in the Footloose run/prop crew, but she also a member of the tennis team. She had her poetry published through the Spanish Honors Society as well.

Thomas plans to carry all of this experience over to McGill University in Montreal, where she’ll study international relations, public health, and foreign languages. She aims to participate in tennis, theater, and writing clubs, as well as the school radio station while she’s enrolled.

These are big plans, but they come at the cost of leaving a life at home behind you. Thomas says she’ll miss all of her friends very much, but is still excited to move on to the next stage of her life.

Now, at the end of her high school experience, Thomas has some final advice for underclassmen who may also have big dreams like hers: ¨…work hard, but still enjoy the journey. [Miniscule] things that may seem important now are often not relevant in the future.¨

Before the curtains do their final draw after the last performance of Footloose (April 29th), the senior were given special recognition for their contributions to the theater department, and their contributions to the school as a whole. Needless to say, they will all be missed.