Hannah Karpenko - Mercy

Don't be surprised if you one day see Hannah Karpenko's name on the marquee of a Broadway theater....or in the opening credits of a blockbuster film. This talented actress from Our Lady of Mercy High School, is in this week's Scholastic Arts Spotlight.

She played Maria in The Sound of Music----and she couldn't be more suited. Hannah Karpenko seems born to perform, and to lead. This Mercy High School senior has acted in more than dozen plays at school, and in Community Theater. For her starring role in Beauty And The Beast---she won an award from the Rochester Broadway Theater League.  And she's also turned pro---with Method Machine Productions. Her first major role was in Steel Magnolias.

"I am very committed to the idea of making this work as a career for me, because I frankly can't see myself doing something else, I like other things and do well in other classes but I don't really feel a passion and drive behind anything I do except theater and performing," says Hannah.

At Mercy High School----Hannah is a leader in the classroom, and out.

Here she is rehearsing the spring production of the Mercy Show Choir. Her teachers say she meets every obligation with a smile.

"She strives for nothing but to create art.  And that's really the only that really motivates her, that and family and friends, but then it is art," says Megan Bianchi, Theatre Director at Mercy.

"There's just this tremendous joy I feel being able to give what this playwright was trying to say and what I want to say, and I just love the fact that I can give something like that to an audience that's receptive and open," says Hannah.

Hannah's goal is to be a working actor, and she'll study theater in college.