Freshman year is one of the most difficult years of high school: getting used to newer schedules, meeting new people, and struggling to keep up with your courses. Now imagine the stress of freshman year tied with the difficulty and stress of being the lead of a theater production. This was and still is the case for now-junior Anthony Saldana.
At West, Saldana is invested in a multitude of activities. He’s a member of Echo Effect, theatre, Masters Choir, Ping Pong Club, and gymnastics. However, his main interests and passions are for Echo Effect and theater because he feels most comfortable in the two.
“My favorite would probably be between Echo Effect and theatre because those are the two things I love doing the most,” Saldana said. “Singing and acting. I feel very ‘at home’ on stage.”
Even before high school, Saldana had a talent for the arts. He enjoyed singing, playing the guitar, and even dabbling in writing his own music.
“My singing is really what got me started with theater. I started singing in fifth grade and began playing the guitar in fourth grade,” Saldana said. “In fifth grade I wrote a song for a concert we were putting on and I got the opportunity to sing it on the radio and it was a great experience. And I’ve been singing ever since.”
Though now a very talented thespian, Saldana was reluctant to participate in his first play during sixth grade. After some encouragement from his mom, he joined and has been doing it ever since.
“My first experience with theater occurred back in sixth grade when I was in a production of Beauty and the Beast. I played the Bookseller and I’ve been doing it [theatre] ever since,” Saldana said. “My mom had to convince me to do it because I was reluctant to do it at first. I thought acting was really hard, and that I couldn’t do it.”
One of Saldana’s largest achievements was playing the lead role of Shrek during his freshman year. Similar to his younger years, he was initially very anxious about performing. But with some help and reassurance from the theatre organization, he became more confident in the role.
“Playing Shrek my freshman year was probably the most stressful thing I’ve done,” Saldana said. “I was just a freshman and all of a sudden I got the lead in the musical and I did not think I could pull it off, and there was so much pressure on my shoulders. I was so nervous and I even emailed Mr. Sinclair about how scared I was. But he was very reassuring and spent a lot of time with me developing my character and making me feel more at home with the department.”
Since then, Saldana has been in various other theater productions including On Stars Not Falling; Almost, Maine; and Director’s Studio. He recently got one of the leads in the newest production, A Streetcar Named Desire.
To get prepared for whatever production he is performing, Saldana does a lot of work analyzing his character, from their actions and words to their motivations and mind.
“To get into character I do a lot of table work,” Saldana said. “What that is is basically analyzing the script — thinking about why my character says certain things, how they react to other characters, and the motives of my character. Getting into your character’s head, basically. And a lot of times you have to step out of your comfort zone for specific roles, especially if they are very different than from how you are in real life.”
Out of all the plays he has performed in, Saldana’s favorite was On Stars Not Falling because it pushed him to step out of his comfort zone. In the production, there was a scene where he was supposed to kiss a man, and he had to get a lot of advice from his peers before he felt he could actually pull of his character.
“On Stars Not Falling was my favorite out of the three I’ve done because it was our Thespian show, which is the show that is run only by students known as Thespians,” Saldana said. “This particular show definitely pushed me as an actor because my character was way out of my comfort zone. I played a gay man in the show and I had an onstage kiss with another man, and I’m heterosexual. My goal was for the audience members, especially those that are more uncomfortable or even opposed to homosexuality, to fall in love with my character as much as I did, and they would be hit with the realization that my character was actually gay. And [accounting for] me having a few gay friends, I wanted to do the role justice and show that homosexuality doesn’t make us different from one another.”
Unlike other members of the theater organization and even kids his own age, Saldana has a different way of looking at separate roles which makes him even more capable of acting at bigger or more difficult roles.
“Anthony is really smart. He always comes in with a bunch of different questions and gives in 100 percent to every role he plays in,” theatre director Andrew Sinclair said. “I know that I can put him in to play more difficult roles because I know that he has the ability and passion to do the best he can.”
Other members of theater who work alongside Saldana can see his passion and determination for every role that he’s in.
“He always has a lot of emotion,” junior Caroline Ryan said. “He’s always the most positive in the room and puts a lot of work forward to play his roles.”
Saldana intends to continue his career in music and theater, and he is currently working on his own album.
“I do intend to pursue a career in the arts and I’m actually currently making an album and I’m getting back into writing music again,” Saldana said. “I’m going to release my first song next month.”
