On stage, Cindy Nisdor was an army commander.
To the judges, she was a high school student auditioning for a Thea Foundation scholarship.
More accurately, when she walks offstage, Nisdor is a 17-year-old senior who is changed, bit by bit, by the characters she portrays and the challenge of performing in front of crowds.
"It's another point of view," the Lake Hamilton High School student said. "Another way of life."
Nisdor moved to Hot Springs from Madrid, Spain, a year and a half ago. She's auditioning for college drama programs in the United States.
On Saturday, Nisdor and 119 other high school students performed a song, dance or monologue at the Argenta Community Theater in North Little Rock in the hope of winning one of 10 college scholarships from the Thea Foundation.
The foundation is a nonprofit organization that advocates the importance of the arts in the development of youths.
Started in 2002, the Thea Foundation Scholarship Competition awards scholarships to graduating seniors for their accomplishments in the arts. The program provides 30 awards each year -- totaling $80,000 -- for Arkansas students in performing arts, visual arts, film, slam poetry, fashion design and creative writing.
The students don't have to major in the arts in college, foundation co-founder and Executive Director Paul Leopoulos said, because participation in the arts is more about confidence-building than anything else.
"We don't care about their grade points, test scores or what they'll major in," Leopoulos said.
Knowing that participation in the arts can change lives is enough, he said.
"You don't have to be the best in it, that's not the point," Leopoulos said.
The foundation was created in remembrance of his daughter, Thea Kay Leopoulos, who was killed in a car accident when she was 17.
She was a C and D student in high school until she became involved in visual art, dance, drama and creative writing. She became an A student in less than a year.
Theater also has helped 17-year-old Chase Taggart focus in school.
"It's given me a lot of motivation," he said. "It really has."
Taggart plans to major in drama at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and then stick with it in a bigger city.
For Jamiel Creer, 18, theater has changed her from bullied and angry to more confident than ever.
"I feel I am so blessed to have theater," she said.
Creer, who performed an intense monologue as a girl leaving a suicide note for her parents, said she knew she had to do theater after taking classes last summer during Arkansas Governor's School, a six-week residential program for gifted and talented students on the Hendrix College campus.
Creer plans to study musical theater at Ouachita Baptist College in the fall.
As for Nisdor, she hopes to move to California or Chicago to major in drama at a school there, continuing the challenge of putting herself in another person's shoes.
"I love doing something else than myself," she said.
Metro on 01/18/2015