Junior Emma Lucas was actually led to acting through competitive cheerleading. The sport helped her confirm that while she didn’t like the cheer environment, she did like performing — so in middle school, she dove into acting instead. Lucas achieved several roles in seventh and eighth grade in addition to acting at the Culture House. Now, she is in“Thoroughly Modern Millie”: her fourth, most difficult and most rewarding high school production.

“I’ve just gone home exhausted every day, but it’s so worth it,” Lucas said. “Once you’ve got it down, you’re just doing it over and over and over again until it’s just natural. You don’t ever want to have the feeling that you’re unprepared — that’s just the worst. For this show we’ve been really prepared for a long time, I think.”

When she first saw her name on the cast list under “Priscilla Girls/Tappers,” Lucas was pretty surprised because she’d never tap-danced before.

“I bought tap shows and was just learning the dance like everybody else, and afterwards I was just like, ‘Schmidt, are you kidding me — I can’t do any of this,’” she said. “Our choreographer jumped right into buffalos and time steps, and I didn’t even know how to do a shuffle. I [still] feel like I stick out — it kind of freaks me out. I just kind of look at the people in front of me and try to mimic them. It was definitely a challenge, [but] now I really enjoy it.”

The rehearsals, which have occurred every day after school for 2 to 3 hours for the past few months, are much more intensive closer to the show. This week has been running the entire show every day. At first it took about 4 hours to run the show, but now it’s trimmed down to the normal amount of time.

“Honestly, this is the most difficult and time-consuming show I have ever been in,” Lucas said. “It’s very physical, the chords are hard and there are things I haven’t really had to do before in a musical. I’ve never felt like I’ve had to put this much work into a show before. It’s such a big show — there are so many people; there are so many elements that go into it. It’s singing and dancing and acting, and it’s not just a little bit at once: it’s all three of them, full blast, the whole show.”

Lucas plays Ethel Peas, a “sweet Southern belle” who first introduces the idea that some girls are being kidnapped and sold into slavery. For her, staying in character means speaking the objective of the scene through every word.

“A lot of people think that backstage is like the things they do in high school musical — shaking their hands or putting their hands over their face and making different faces,” Lucas said. “It’s nothing like that. I’m thinking the moment before ‘Where am I coming from? What do I want from this scene?”

Before every show, the cast gathers in a circle in the dark so they can speak their thoughts without anyone knowing who is saying them. Lucas remembers the awe she first felt with this tradition when she was a freshman. Now it just seems normal. Similarly, when Lucas had her first major roles in middle school she would get butterflies, but now, stage fright is a foreign concept.

“You’ve rehearsed it so many times that it’s just unconscious,” she said. “You are the character. You aren’t even thinking that there’s an audience there. It’s the greatest feeling to just be lost in that character.”

More on Emma Lucas:

• If you could be any animal: “[I’d be] a bird so I could fly to anywhere I want!”
• Something most people don’t know: “When I grow up I want to be a marriage and family therapist!”
• Number one pet peeve: “I don’t like when people are overly opinionated.”
• If you could travel anywhere in the world: “[I’d travel to] Amsterdam, because it’s supposed to be beautiful and the culture is so unique!”