by: Kris Battle

Journeys vary from person to person. Some are difficult. All journeys have highs
and lows. Others might not even be your own journey “Mr. Coley kind of started my journey through it,“ said senior Aiden Monforto.

It has been quite the senior year for the Lee County High School thespian. Monforto, along with senior Lorelei Garrity, directed The Little Mermaid in the fall. Monforto followed that up with leading performances in the spring semester, staring as Charlie Brown in You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, and starting Thursday night as Shrek in the musical Shrek.

Introduced to theatre by his grandparents at a young age, Monforto began performing when he was 6-years-old. After two years he took a break, but when he got to high school, decided the stage was calling his name.

“I was in the show but just as little characters,” Monforto said. Beauty and the Beast was his first show at LCHS. Since then, he has consistently worked to improve and earn larger roles. But it was not necessarily the stage that kept him coming back, but the people.

The other students in theatre were welcoming and nice. He felt really comfortable with them.

“I’ve enjoyed it,” Monforto added. “I like the people there too.

“He’s very comfortable down here with both me and Mrs. Hughes,” said theatre teacher Ron Coley.

After graduation he wants to be an auto mechanic and work on cars “but I want to specifically
work on cars,” he said.

Monforto is very passionate and confident about what he wants to put his energy into. His confidence is the one thing Coley can put his finger on and say that is where Monforto has grown the most in his four years in the LCHS theatre department.

“His confidence has improved a lot since freshman year,” Coley said. “He kind of knows now
that he can do it. I don’t mean to say he’s cocky. There’s a difference, he’s just confident.”

Monforto speaks highly of his teacher even through the ups and downs he expressed. “You can see they really care about everyone,” Monforto said sincerely.

Remembering back to Monforto’s freshman year, Coley said he didn’t know if the now senior would ever score a leading role. Now, he’s all over the stage at LCHS.

“When he first came in as a ninth grader,” Coley remembered, “he was kind of quiet and I thought, well, he seems to enjoy this, but I didn’t know if he would ever be doing the big parts and now he just played Charlie Brown and now he’s doing Shrek. He just keeps growing.”

Shrek opened Thursday at LCHS. Performances also run Friday and Saturday night.