AHS students take center stage

Olivia Mauk
Ever since Olivia Mauk was a child, she has been interested in being on television. “It’s just always sparked my interest and I wanted to be like the people on TV,” she said.

She started acting in fourth grade at her church and expanded her experience when she was a freshman and joined theater as Armijo. Kate McKinnon is an actress that Mauk is inspired by, and several people have told Mauk that she reminds them of her.

Mauk said that she enjoys being new characters, characters that maybe people don’t see all the time. “Getting out of your comfort zone is really hard because sometimes you feel silly being on stage doing something kind of weird, but that kind of goes with the growing process,” she said.

One of her strengths as an actor is Character Development. Mauk takes the time to outline her character before she fully performs it. A weakness, however, is that she puts off memorizing lines a lot until the last minute. “I need to learn that, while I set aside time to develop a character, I need to also set aside time to make sure I know what I’m going to say because that’s really important.”

One of her favorite roles was being Olive Ostrovsky from The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which was last year’s spring musical. “I just think she has so much depth and she’s just such an interesting character to play. She has so much going on and there’s so much emotion and she was very unique in that way,” said Mauk. She does plan on acting in community theater as a hobby, but now her career goal is aimed at becoming an Environmental Lawyer.

Christian Jeric Jason Ordonez
What really sparked Christian Jeric Jason Ordonez’s interest in theater was playing as Leaf Coneybear from the spring musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. “My favorite character is Leaf because I get to play this jovial bumbly kid who has ADHD, and I don’t know if I have ADHD, but I do get distracted a lot, like I zone out a lot,” he said. “It’s just like me in some ways…It’s almost like an excellent portrayal of me because [Leaf] is just unpredictable and let’s his intrusive thoughts win sometimes, he just likes spelling, I like spelling.”

Ordonez enjoys getting to portray another character. “If it ends up that I get hated as the character, that means that I’m doing good,” he said. “If they like my character, that means I’m doing good, too. But if I’m doing an excellent portrayal of the character, it just makes my heart warm.”

It’s hard when he doesn’t get the roles that he wants, but Ordonez ends up liking to perform either way.

He tends to seek out other performances of his character to see how they portray his role. Armijo Theatre Productions is currently working on a show called Crush and Ordonez plays a character named Cole. “It’s like a very secretive play that no one has a recording of except this one Zoom call and it’s very hard to get a reference of what this character is like,” he said.

Method acting is something that makes Ordonez stand out as an actor, and he’s been inspired by other method actors like Heath Ledger. Ordonez plans to continue acting after high school. “I just want to be a big name, like even for a minute. I want my 15 minutes of fame, and I’m okay with it being for a few seconds that the whole world sees me and that I get recognized,” he said.

Charlotte Borlek
Another star in the Armijo world is Charlotte Borlek. “Charlotte has been in many Missouri Street Theatre youth and adult plays,” said Ms. Kaitlin Hernandez. “She has a lovely singing voice and LOVES her time in musical theatre.

Last fall, Borlek had a role as Louisa Von Trapp in The Sound of Music. She was unavailable for comment.