Arts Student of the Week: Ethan Rauschkolb

Live theater returns to the Niwot High stage starting on Nov. 5 with the premiere of "Peter and the Starcatcher," a semi-musical reimagining of the Peter Pan story that explores his life before Neverland. Bringing the title character to life is senior Ethan Rauschkolb, a veteran of the NHS stage who said he is thrilled to be back in front of a live audience.

"Opening is November 5th, and we're super excited about it," he said of the upcoming production, the first non-virtual one in more than 18 months. "I'm really proud of the work that the students are putting in, and the directing from Mrs. Wainschal, and Mrs. Walters, the choir teacher, and Mr. Watkins with tech. We're all coming together to make a really, really good show."

Rauschkolb's most recent turn on the Niwot stage came as a sophomore in the ensemble cast for "The Addams Family Musical," which opened in early March 2020. He was the one on crutches, thanks to a broken knee, making his minor part all the more memorable. But even more memorable for Rauschkolb was his performance as Prince Charming in the Grimm Brothers Spectacularthon the prior fall.

"That Cinderella scene will probably remain one of my greatest crowning achievements in the theater department," he said. "I look back on it so fondly. I played multiple different roles with different voices. It was an absolute blast to play."

For obvious reasons, Rauschkolb's performing career went on hiatus after his stint in "The Addams Family," but his passion for theater did not. So he turned to online classes from Boulder Ensemble during the quarantine, where he found a new outlet for his creativity.

"I wanted to make people laugh, and I wanted to make people smile and forget about COVID for a little bit, so I wrote a play heavily inspired by 'Clue,' called 'Hint,' he said. "It's definitely a little bit of a parody, and a little bit of an homage. I took a lot of different inspiration from a bunch of goofy murder mysteries and mashed it into one."

Then-NHS drama teacher Kathryn Colabroy-Foulke offered to stage the production with advanced drama students, but the ongoing pandemic and transition between hybrid and online classes made that process difficult. Finally, Rauschkolb was able to produce a virtual version of "Hint" that debuted in March 2021, featuring an original soundtrack by recent NHS graduate Grable Howie.

"I was really happy with it, it's another one of my greatest achievements," he said. "In a lot of ways, the non-live performance suited it, because it helped cover up some of the mistakes I made as a novice playwright. So there were some bits that were a little bit clunky, and being able to film it and have music over the whole play bridged some of the more awkward parts and brought the whole thing together."

Despite a lifelong love of performing and "being in the spotlight," Rauschkolb does not plan to pursue a career on the stage, or even behind the stage. Instead, he is hoping to combine his creative impulses with another one of his passions, computer technology.

"I've taken coding classes ever since sixth grade, and I've taken at least one coding class of some sort through middle school through every single year of high school," he said. "But I was never taking those classes to learn technical coding. I was always taking it because I really enjoyed creating stuff."

That has led Rauschkolb to classes at St. Vrain's Innovation Center, which he called "his absolute favorites". As of now, he is hoping to break into video game design and creation, a field he called "fun, creative, and engaging."

"I'm looking to write stories for video games, and my ultimate goal is to be a Disney Imagineer," he said. "I want to create things that people can enjoy and escape into, and so it feels like the next best thing to get people engaged is what I create when working in video games."

In furtherance of that, he plans to enroll next year at either the University of Utah or Champlain College, a small liberal arts school in Burlington, Vermont. Each boasts one of the top game design programs in the country, and Rauschkolb is genuinely torn about which to choose.

Luckily, he still has a few more months to decide. In the meantime, Rauschkolb's busy academic and extracurricular schedule should keep his mind off of it. Outside his roles on stage, he is also vice president of the school's drama club, a member of the boys junior varsity tennis team, and president of Niwot's chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He also recently joined Up-A-Creek Robotics' Team 1619, one of the most competitive in the nation, and next semester, he plans to try out for the spring musical. In his spare time, he writes stories for a superhero universewhich he keeps on a personal website (rauschkolbethan.wixsite.com/the-mero-universe), and he is also 115 pages into writing a novel.

Peter and the Starcatcher runs Nov. 5-8 at Niwot High. Shows start at 7 p.m. on Friday, and Saturday, with a 2 p.m. matinée on Sunday. Tickets are $10, and can be purchased online. For more information, visit Niwot High's website