Photo courtesy of Ellie Shea

National merit scholar, varsity tennis player, actress and now director, Ellie Shea is a multifaceted student with a special fondness for theater. 

Shea has been a part of theater since third grade, and this interest has carried her to a wide variety of theater projects in high school. In her senior year, she has assumed leadership roles in two areas of the theater sphere, where she is the co-captain of the Shakespeare Slam Team and the director of the Studio 200 production “A Body of Water,” by Lee Blessing, which runs Feb. 18 to 20.

To Shea, leadership is about supporting the people that you lead and fostering inclusive and connected environments. “I really love getting the opportunity to help out underclassmen and really form a community in several different spaces,” she said.

According to Rowan Neville, the other co-captain of Shakespeare Slam Team, Shea embodies her leadership values. “Ellie’s very good at keeping it within the community and being collaborative, while still keeping a handle on what she needs to do in her position,” he said. “She’s a great person to work with because she’s very on top of all the things, but she’s also very understanding of everyone and all of the needs of people.” The team’s regional competition is in mid-April at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

Leadership is a big part of directing a play, an intricate organizational and technical process. Shea has extensive experience as a performer, but in her director’s role, she is responsible for engineering an entire production. 

Four seniors are chosen each year to direct a play, and the process is competitive. The candidates undergo a rigorous application process they submit as juniors, in which they write about their plans for the two potential choices of shows. They must have experience as an assistant director or stage manager and have taken the directing class. 

Shea is now directing “A Body of Water” one year after she applied for the role. She expressed a particular enjoyment of the technical aspect of the position. “It’s such a cool opportunity that OPRF offers its seniors,” she said. 

“I get to decide the casting. I get to decide all the blocking,” she continued. “I have so much input on the technical things, like communicating with the Theater Tech and Design class, and I’ll have input on my set pieces, props, and stuff… And it’s been really cool to fully step into that space… It’s allowed me to be creative in a really different way.” 

In addition to contemporary pieces, she has also developed a love for Shakespearean plays, which began her freshman year when she played a gravedigger in “Hamlet.”

“After I did ‘Hamlet,’ I started to realize how funny Shakespeare was, and all the different dimensions in it, that there are really complex relationships between the characters, and that there’s a reason his plays have lasted throughout time,” she said. “The themes he passes on are still true today. After that, I knew I wanted to do Shakespeare Slam Team, and it led me on a new path in theater.”

Having known Shea since her freshman year, OPRF English teacher James Bell reflected on her progression as a person, leader and actor. “She just gets more and more confident. She’s always been willing to take risks, and now she doesn’t have to be asked to take risks. She does it on her own, and every time she is in a performance, her performance has become more specific and more nuanced; she’s able to create such wonderful and lively characters,” said Bell. 

He added that she is able to connect with the people she leads through her example and kindness. “She’s so sweet and nice to people and open and generous. She always wants the group to do better, not just to have her own performance shine.”

When asked if he had anything to say to Shea, Bell replied back with a heartfelt question: “Do you want me to start crying? I’m just so proud of her. The artist that she has become and is becoming is just nothing short of remarkable.” For her future, he added, “I want her to keep creating art and keep showing her peers what’s possible if they take risks and put themselves out there.”

Whether she ends up using her talents to be an engineer or study political science, Shea intends to use the leadership skills that theater has taught her beyond high school. “I think I’ll always be able to carry the experiences that I’ve learned from high school,” she said. “I think being able to be a director and knowing about acting and understanding technical theater has given me a lot of skills that I can apply to different situations.” 

Being a leader has “taught me to really ask for the things I want and fight for the things I want,” she said. “I will definitely be proactive in other positions in life and always be working to keep moving up in life.”