When Buford High School junior Amelia Lister was only five years old, she sang and performed “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” to her classmates, and the rest, as they say, is history.
After making her musical theater debut to the well-known Christmas tune in her Louisiana kindergarten classroom, Lister moved back to Georgia with her family and started attending theater summer camps and extracurricular classes at the Aurora Theatre in downtown Lawrenceville. Her interest and passion for music and theater was undeniable and her parents, Darryl and Amy Lister, encouraged her to develop her talents.
In addition to starring in multiple productions at the high school’s Performing Arts Center, including the lead as Donna Sheridan in the spring performance of Mamma Mia as well as Elizabeth Proctor in the dialogue-heavy drama The Crucible, Lister has worked as a choreographer for the upcoming production of Shipwrecked, opening at Buford High School on September 22. Lister was proud to tell about the tribal celebration dance she choreographed for the show, and Leila Bowman, Buford High School’s theater director, praised Lister for her work ethic as well as her talent.
“Amelia always comes prepared for rehearsals and performances and is always ready with an informed understanding of her characters,” said Bowman. “She is never idle; she is always working.”
Bowman recognized Lister’s talents not long after taking over as theater director in Fall 2023. “I always knew Amelia possessed talent, but I realized how talented she was during Into the Woods. She played the Baker’s Wife, and during her solo “Moments in the Woods” she fully became the character.” Bowman added, “That takes years to train to be that locked into a character, and here she was as a sophomore doing what college students are learning to master. Her powerful voice coupled with her honest acting makes her a pillar of our program.”
And, the praise between teacher and student is mutual. Lister identified Bowman as one of the most influential people in her life.
“She’s always been very encouraging and she instilled a work ethic in me that makes me never want to settle for good. I want to be great, or amazing,” Lister said. “She helps me fight for what I really, really want in theater.”
While theater dominates most of her time, Lister enjoyed participating in chess club as a freshman. She laughed as she admitted that she wasn’t very good at it, but she made good friends and hopes to attend again at some point. Additionally, she identified Brent Leitsch’s physics class as her favorite class outside of theater.
“It’s a very fun class,” Lister said. “I’m normally not very good at science, but with physics, for some reason, I understand it a lot better than other sciences I have taken.”
In addition to her time spent at voice lessons and memorizing lines for upcoming shows, Lister confessed that she, like many, got sucked into the Olympic games this past summer. She took an unusual liking to fencing.
“I’m not a big sports person,” Lister said, “but anytime the Olympics were on, I got into watching fencing a lot. I found it surprisingly enjoyable, and I can understand how it works very easily.”
Even though she is still a junior and part of the 2026 graduating class, Lister is certain she wants to pursue musical theater as a career.
“I know it’s very rigorous and it’s also a very competitive environment, but I’ve dedicated a lot of my life to it, and I don’t know what my life would be without theater,” Lister said.
Lister has looked at many schools, including Carnegie Mellon and Elon Universities, but is considering international options as well.
In the meantime, Amelia Lister will star as Rona Lisa Peretti in the show The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a 90-minute comedy coming this fall, and playing Bea in her Advanced Musical Theatre class’s production of Something Rotten.
Lister’s early interest in performing blossomed into a true passion and talent.
Earning high praise from her teacher, Bowman concluded, “Amelia has that “it” quality that you can’t manufacture, and I can’t wait to see how she soars this year.”
