Jane Yermakov

Senior Aidan Cox stands on a set piece of “Elf: The Musical,” belting his heart out. “It’s absolutely a challenge [acting] and it always is within the industry,” Cox said. “But it is the one thing that I will find the most fulfilling. I got this piece of advice from someone that I had a voice lesson with once who told me that ‘If you can see yourself in any other career, do that. But if there is just something in the back of your mind that is telling you that you have to perform, those are the kinds of people who should be going into it.’”

Lights up, center stage and a standing ovation erupts from the crowd. As the audience gets louder and louder with each cheer, senior Aidan Cox stands still, embracing the love.

In Cox’s fourth grade year, he took a small, week-long summer camp that was based around theater. A teacher would then encourage Cox to take one of the semester-long after-school programs, specifically, a production of “Peter Pan.” 

“I auditioned and I ended up getting cast as Peter Pan,” Cox said. “I’m in this little fourth grade kind of production and I immediately fell in love. I didn’t know at the time that that was what I wanted to go into as a career yet. But I knew that I loved doing it and I wanted to keep doing it.”

With this spark of passion, Cox was able to gain the motivation to continue acting, and more specifically become more involved in musical theater. 

“I have always been a storyteller,” Cox said. “That’s always something that I have loved doing. One of my earliest memories is of my mom reading a bedtime story to me and then I would butt in with how I think the story should keep going. So I’ve always been drawn to telling stories, and that is what brought me to music and theater and everything surrounding it in the first place. I knew I wanted to tell stories. And recently, I have discovered that my goal is to tell stories that mean something to people that can help them through things. I kind of make them see a different perspective of the world and through my art, to be able to move the world along in whatever little way that I can.”

Cox isn’t just an actor, though he also participates in choir and the school’s elite octet, Pitch Black. 

“When I was going into sixth grade, I had already done a couple youth musical theater shows, and I was choosing between what activity to start doing [in school] because I knew I wanted to keep singing and keep doing theater,” Cox said. “I ended up choosing choir because it was a full year instead of a semester. I’d been doing it for longer, so I started doing choir. Then Pitch Black came and sang ‘The Bells of Notre Dame’ for our sixth grade choir class. And I was like, ‘that is what I want to do more than just about anything in high school’.”

Cox set out to fulfill his dreams of being in Pitch Black as soon as he could.

“I got into high school and I knew that I was going to audition for it, and I was working as much as I could for it,” Cox said. “I got the privilege of being in Pitch Black for the past three years after that. It’s been a dream. It’s been incredible.”

Through his time at the school, Cox has played many roles, most recently being Buddy The Elf, and his favorite role he’s ever played, Edward in the musical “Big Fish.”

“I was very, very, similar to Edward Bloom, and I didn’t get to know him for all that long,” Cox said. “Channeling into that character was really nice and therapeutic for me. I connected to Edward so much on so many different levels in that he just had this sense of wonder for anything around him, and he would always find ways to see how something could be more fantastical than it was, or just how things could be in spite of the way that they were.”

While acting may be what he is most well known for, Cox made his directorial debut earlier this year by directing the musical components of “Grease.”

“I always kind of grew up around music,” Cox said. “What’s always interested me is putting together that kind of musical component and trying to channel the stories that I want to tell through that. And I thought that would be an incredible opportunity to explore, guiding a cast and navigating them through the music and the stories that I want to tell. And also giving the [cast] the opportunity to take all of the kinds of liberties and tell the stories that make it the most authentic to them. It was just an incredibly gratifying experience to be able to guide them through telling their own stories.”

Cox plans to attend The Boston Conservatory at Berklee where he will be majoring in musical theater and minoring in music technology.

“I see myself still doing a lot of the stuff that I’m doing now,” Cox said. “I’m doing a lot of shows, doing a lot of musical theater, building up my skills in acting, music and dance in that kind of conservatory environment where everyone around me is doing some sort of art. I’m ridiculously excited to be able to develop my craft and develop my art in an environment surrounded by people who are as passionate [as I am] about a desire.”