The lights switch on, illuminating the brightly colored set at the front of the Blackbox. Bradley, a thirteen-and-two-fifths-year-old boy clothed in rolled-up faded jeans, black work boots, and a red jacket pulled over a t-shirt dashes onto the stage, falling swiftly onto the dusty floor. Always with his backpack in hand, this energized entrance perfectly suits the melodramatic lead of “Troublemaker, or the Freaking Kick-A Adventures of Bradley Boatright’’”, the 2013 freshman play.
Henry Morehouse, a freshman at Brookline High School and fairly new to performing arts, embodies this masterminded troublemaker perfectly.
“My first real performance was seventh grade,” Morehouse said. Since then, theater has become a main focus of his. “If it’s available, I jump on it immediately. And I love going to theater, listening to theater, performing theater- it’s all awesome.”
So when the opportunity to be in the Freshman Play rose, Henry seized it. The audition process had multiple steps.
“In the first part, we were put into groups of four and we had to come up with a little sketch. If they liked it then you got to come back for the second one, which was scene readings,” he said.
Once he was casted as Bradley, Henry was free to make the character his own. However, he found their only similarity was how both he and Bradley tended to be imaginative and distractible.
“I feel like I am very much in my own world a lot of the time.” Morehouse said. But unlike Bradley, “I don’t run away from home, I don’t get captured by correctional schools, and I don’t play tetherball.”
It was out of this void between performance and reality that the young actor was able to create a unique and believable hero. Filled with moments of comedy and tenderness, each of Henry’s lines were delivered with clarity and the attitude that only someone just beginning to see the world as it is can summon.
This pure aspect of acting is precisely what draws Henry Morehouse to it, and he hopes to continue his career in theater through high school and beyond.
“I just love pretending to be someone else and seeing what I can do out of pretty much nothing, just out of myself. Proving that you can do it is really satisfying.”
Hannah Lowenstein can be contacted at [email protected]
