Jackson Schlichting is now officially a veteran of the Vail Performing Arts Academy productions as the 30th Anniversary Celebration marked his 3rd year in the program. Here he lets us in on the memories and lessons learned through his experience.

What school do you go to and what grade are you in? I'm in 6th grade, and I go to ECCA.

What are your favorite subjects in school? Math and PE.

And when you're not in school, what do you like to do? Play video games. I like Ark Survival and Roblox. And I did basketball. The basketball season ended.

How was your season? Pretty good. We got third or fourth.

How did you first hear about VPAA and what got you excited about it? Performing. I've always liked performing. Performing is fun.

What kind of performances did you play? It was just like small things. I can't really remember it very well. I remember in fourth grade we did a performance about the westward expansion.

Was the 30th Anniversary Review your first performance? It was my third performance. My first one was last winter. Yeah, it was last winter.

Do you remember what song you sang in that one? I sang the very first one, which was from High School Musical where school is out and they're super excited.

And then your next show was...? It was Mean Girls. I was mostly a side character. My role, his name was Shane Olin. I remember that part.

What songs did you perform in the most recent show? I performed in a song called “Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof.

You did a solo? Yeah.

Were you in other songs too? We're in most of the songs, unless we have to change while a song is going on. Otherwise, we're in all of the songs.

Going back for a little bit to when you first auditioned, what did that feel like? To audition, you can take a song that you want to sing, and you practice it and then you sing it in front of everybody and they judge if you should sing that song or not. I think I should have been more aware of what I was doing. I wasn't very serious about the first one. It was kind of just a fun thing that happened.

What did you learn from that? Probably to be a little bit more serious about auditioning.

Did you pick the song? Yes, you can sing any song you want. I did “Riptide”. But I did not practice very hard.

What was it like going to practice every day for three weeks? Well, it was hard to get up for the first week. And then I started waking up before I had to get up. I'm lying there thinking about, I'm going to have to get up in ten minutes.

How does it feel for you to be on stage? I've never really gotten much stage fright. It's mostly like when the very first big performance is, that's when you get all the stage fright. But otherwise, you really know everybody there so it's not that bad.

Is opening night exciting for you? Um, uh, we have to get there at like four hours before the actual show to practice again. We do a whole other dress rehearsal before the show starts. And then we go out, we prepare ourselves mentally by doing a ritual in the hallway.

Which is? We call it “Bananas”. It's us screaming as loud as we can in the hallway and hoping that we don’t get heard by everybody who's sitting in the crowd. And then we go out and we start performing. It's very nerve-wracking the first time. Okay, you've got people in the audience but then as it goes on, it gets easier.

What part is the most fun? I like dancing, dancing is fun. So that part wasn't as intimidating. The singing part is really the worst part for me. The dancing part is fairly easy to remember because it's not remembering words, it's remembering what you've practiced physically.

Is it hard to remember all the lyrics? Sometimes. We were told if we mess up, just keep singing because nobody is going to know you messed up. Unless somebody is like, no, you weren't supposed to say that.

Has that happened to you? No, not yet.

What are the most important things you've learned from being involved with VPAA? Um, nothing comes easily. And, um, work for what you want.

What's the best thing about performing? When you get to actually go and do something right. Well, you've worked for it and so you've earned that moment of glory, right? So that's sort of the most rewarding part.

Do you have a favorite memory? Probably my favorite part was backstage when we were all trying to get changed and probably being too loud and goofing around and playing and chasing each other.

So what's next for you? I don't really know. I'm just going to keep doing it because it's really fun.