Before last year, Jackson High School junior Adrian Farais didn’t do plays. He was a wrestler and played other sports.
But a random turn of events got Farais — who played the lead in the musical “Footloose” this past weekend — so deep into theater he now wants to make a career of it.
The transition wasn’t easy. His friends teased him.
“It was a big line for me (to cross), going from being a macho varsity wrestler to someone who was dancing on stage,” Farais said. “It was scary at first.”
Last fall, Farais took a theater improv class thinking it would be an easy “A.”
Within the first week the theater director came to him and said he looked comfortable on stage. He told her he didn’t “do plays.”
“She nagged me for four days straight and I ended up auditioning for ‘Grease’ and getting one of the lead roles,” Farais said.
At the time, Farais was in transition socially, trying to find his niche.
He found it with the theater crowd.
“That’s where all my friends are now,” he said. “You end up spending so much time with these people and get so close to them.”
Farais enjoyed playing the lead role of Ren in “Footloose.” (It’s the Kevin Bacon character in the 1980s movie.)
The plot is that Ren loves to dance, but ends up moving to a small town in Texas where dancing is illegal. He puts up a fight and at the end the town has a dance, with a little romance on the way.
The musical features popular 1980s songs like “Let’s Hear It For the Boy” by Deniece Williams and Bonnie Tyler’s “I Need a Hero.”
“We go really big and ’80s with the hair and costumes,” Farais said. “We went all out with it.”
Farais’ goal now is to apply to arts school for a theater degree, with the hope he can keep acting and singing.
“As long as I get time to spend on stage, that’s all I care about,” he said.
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