About Me

Hi! My name is Elena Parkerson, and I live in Cheshire, Connecticut. I am a Freshman and a day student. For the past three years I have run cross country for my school and I’ve also played two seasons of Ultimate Frisbee. I’ve been in probably every school play that has been offered to me, including the drama club plays we put on in middle school. My favorite shows are Hamilton, In the Heights, Dear Evan Hansen, Wicked, Come From Away, Les Mis, and Newsies (among others), and I just recently saw Waitress on Broadway.

One thing that you should know about me is that for six and a half year I lived overseas. When I was four my family moved to La Paz, Bolivia, and we lived there until I was almost eight. Then we moved to Kampala, Uganda, where we lived for two and a half years until we finally moved back to the U.S. where we have been living for about five years now. Living abroad has given me a much wider perception of the world, and I’ve loved experiencing things that most other American kids have not, like having monkeys run across the roof of my school like squirrels would here. Living in Bolivia means that I used to be completely fluent in Spanish, but as soon as we moved away I forgot most of it and am now relearning it. For the longest time soccer was “football”, counterclockwise was “anticlockwise” (it still is), and the date was written with the day before the month. Unfortunately I am now quite American (boring!) but really glad to have experienced other parts of the world for so long.

Another thing about me is that I love reading. Some of my favorite books and series are The Golden Compass, Harry Potter, Ms. Peregrine’s home for Peculiar Children, Shadowhunters, Watership Down, and The Book Thief, and I am currently reading The Hate U Give. The most tedious thing I have read is probably Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton (because I was a devoted Hamilfan!) which was 730 pages long and way too interested in describing the Federalist Papers, but since I have read it I understand the show a lot more than I would have had I not, even finding some quotes that were put directly into songs. I have also tried to convince my seven year old sister that she really loves reading too, so she thinks that she loves reading but really she doesn’t care that much.

The last thing about me is that for as long as I can remember my family has loved to go camping. The last two summers we camped on a tiny island in Lake Saranac in New York. We had to canoe all of our supplies over to our campsite, and we spent our time canoeing (and swimming!) between islands, going cliff jumping, and playing Werewolf. A couple of years ago we went on a backpacking trip in the White Mountains. We carried all of our food, clothes, and tents with us. We hiked up and stood at the peak of four different mountains during the trip. Because of adventures like these I have learned to love  nature.

                                         
I joined this class because I have always loved theatre, but it doesn’t really come naturally to me. I want to work on getting comfortable acting in front of people and feeling less self conscious, and hopefully working towards getting a larger role in future musicals.