A bright red head amongst a crowd of black, brown and blonde-haired people, Hannah Eckert stands out in stark contrast from her surroundings, her dark clothes creating a striking juxtaposition. Spending 30 minutes with an XL Ziploc Bag full of red hair dye on her head, she made the spur-of-the-moment decision to dye her hair a bright, ruby red the week before the start of her senior year.

“[My hair] was very spontaneous. I like the color red; it’s my favorite color. It was senior year, and it was just like, ‘Why not?’” she said.

Her grandmother, who is a retired hair stylist, often tries different colors on Hannah’s hair. Marina Logue, her close friend since sixth grade, has bore witness to all of her bold hair choices, from copper streaks to blonde tips to the bright red she currently sports.

“Hannah tends to be an out-of-the-box thinker when it comes to making decisions and trying new things. I swear, every few months, she comes to school with a different hair color,” Marina said. “She doesn’t let people’s opinions get in her way when it comes to being herself and making decisions that she cares about.”

Abigail Wisdom, whom she met in their freshman year, admires her ability to create her own distinct style.

“She won’t do something crazy, but she stays true to herself. She’s definitely unique,” Abigail said. “She’s always playing around with her looks and styles; it’s very cool.”

She has tried to act extemporaneously since she was young, trying new things regardless of her experience with them. Her acting career began at age eight; when her friends began performing, she pushed herself to do the same.

“[My friends] started having a lot of fun, so I decided to force myself into it to see if I could make myself like it,” she said. “And then, when I actually joined one of my first productions, I realized that I didn’t have to force myself to do it. I just had to actually follow through with it and it actually ended up being a lot of fun. And after that, I kept it up and kept doing shows.”

One specific performance, where she played the roll of Marie in the Aristocrats, ignited this passion for performing.

“That was what I considered my first big role,” Hannah said. “I counted every single one of my lines, and I made sure my parents knew I had sixteen lines, which was very important to me at the time. That was when I first found that excitement for theater that I would carry with me later on.”

Although she enjoys choir and musical theater, she is most passionate about regular, non-musical theater.

“I find it harder to really get into a character when I’m constantly breaking out into song and dance. It’s fun, but it’s not the same. I don’t have the same mindset when I do it,” she said. “I like theater because I’m able to believe it a little bit too. I like to make it feel, at least to myself, a little more real.”

Although she views theater as more than a social call, her passion for theater has helped her adapt to new environments. When the transition to The Harker Middle School from Forest Hill Elementary, a public school in Campbell, proved to be a startling change, theater helped her find people who shared her interests.

“I will not lie: [coming to Harker] was rough,” Hannah said. “I came from a very chill public school, so when I transitioned here, I’m like, ‘What the [heck] did I just get myself into?’ I was not ready. I did not know how to navigate the school, and on top of that, I didn’t know anybody.”

Despite the challenges she faced in this new environment, Hannah found that persistence was rewarding in the end after finding people she connected with through theater.

“It was not an easy adjustment,” she said. “But, in eighth grade, I joined Harmonics, and I also did the musical and so that just kind of kickstarted me and got me on board with all the theater kids. I finally found my group.”

She also pushed herself to join the cross country team in her junior year of high school, her lack of experience with the sport notwithstanding.

“I always want to try and push myself to do things that I wouldn’t normally do. Cross country was obviously not something I did. In the first week, my only goal was just to see the back of somebody’s head,” she said, laughing. “I only succeeded half the time and got lost multiple times during that season. I was able to push through it and I ended up having a good time.”

While she sometimes struggles to motivate herself to take risks, she has found the ability to make decisions based on what would make her happy and exercise her passions.

“I’m trying to major in performing arts,” she said. “[But] I can’t just [do that] without eventually developing some kind of backup plan because in theater, there are a lot of things that determine whether or not you make it and some of them are outside of your control. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out. But, ultimately, theater is what makes me the happiest, and so I’m going to put that before anything else.”

Although the outcome may be unclear, she makes decisions with the goal in mind to enjoy herself and discover new passions.

“Sometimes [taking risks] pays off,” Hannah said. “You might learn something new about yourself that you didn’t know before.”

She seeks out new experiences and presses on with these commitments she makes, stressing that no one can truly know themselves until they try new things.

“Some people call it perseverance, some people call it stubbornness. It’s the same reason that I didn’t drop out of Harker when I came and started suffocating under the new workload,” she said. “I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, and here I am, in senior year. It does you justice to stick things out.”