Alyssa Gill

Who is Alyssa Gill? Only the coolest, craziest gangsta this side of the Mississippi! Alyssa is pretty out there, but she’s not out there like a bag lady, just like herself. It’s a very thin line that Alyssa treads between weird and stupid. But she always makes it work because her weirdness stems from spontaneity and not randomness. With Alyssa you never know what’s going to happen next. She has always been weird, but Berkeley High School was the first place where she has felt comfortable with her weirdness. And her weirdness has stemmed into coolness.

Alyssa Gill is also one of the few who is cool because she is weird. Alyssa does sports. She has been on the varsity badminton team for her entire high school career. She also was a golfer her sophomore year. In sophomore year she also worked with the program “Teens Teaching Tobacco” where she taught middle school students about the dangers of tobacco. This year, she has run the Academic Choice (AC) mentoring program where AC freshman are given advice about the ins, outs, ups, downs, and all arounds of BHS by upperclassmen.

Alyssa does theater. She was in The Madwoman of Chaillot and The Vagina Monologues. She directed this year’s fall play, Comic Potential. This was her crowning accomplishment of high school. For her, it was a journey of growing as a director and learning about theater, and simultaneously learning about herself.

For everyone involved, it was the experience of a lifetime. Alyssa was so in love with the show that she meticulously planned every scene out before staging. She would read far deeper into her characters than other teen directors. On her directorial debut she blew everyone out of the water.

But her skill is only one third of the reason why the show worked. Orson Welles was one of the best directors of all time but he could not have put half the time into cast bonding that Alyssa did. She made the cast a family like no other director. And the togetherness that they felt was instrumental in the success of Comic Potential.

Alyssa might continue to learn about theater, as her major along with women/gender studies with a minor in play writing, directing, business management, sociology ... or something else at beautiful Knox College in the middle of nowhere, Illinois.

“The most important accomplishment of mine in high school was my transformation from being self-conscious to extremely comfortable with who I am,” she explained.

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• Alyssa Gill