On-screen dreams

Leah Hummel started performing in theater in fifth grade for fun. Now, nearly seven years later, she’s decided to make a career of it.

“I fell in love,” she said. “Theater made me want to drop everything else and just do that.”

After performing in “High Society” with the Jay County Civic Theatre in eighth grade, Hummel began to draw attention from others in the industry. She was the only cast member younger than 18 years old. Acting coach Dave Flowers, who also performed in the show, recommended to Hummel’s mother that she take classes.

“Asking a junior high kid to watch a 1928, you know, hour and 40 minute silent film is almost impossible, it’s impossible to get them to watch anything past Tik Tok nowadays,” Flowers said. “But Leah’s the type of person that does that type of stuff. She watches old movies, she researches characters, so, from the get-go she was always very determined and very professional as a student.”

He found Hummel a talent agent and helped her realize she could pursue an acting career, she said. She has performed in multiple JCCT and high school shows, including Disney’s “Frozen Junior” with the civic theater in December.

She appeared in the “Masterpiece” music video for Winona Avenue. Hummel also started pursuing film her sophomore year, a transition in which theater performers generally thrive, said director Alan Wills.

“The difference between stage acting and film making, with film making, you have the opportunity to say, ‘cut, let’s do that again,’ where (with) stage acting, there’s no ‘cut,’” he said.

When she visited New York City for vacation last summer, Hummel worked on the set of “Defending Jacob,” a mini series on Apple TV+ about a family defending their son against murder. She said the environment and people made her want to focus her efforts more toward film.

Since then, she starred in two short films, “Bloody Mary” and “Moira,” and she was also featured in “Love, Jordan,” a short film about a teacher who finds a suicide note and strives to find the student who wrote it before they take their own life.

As a high school student, she serves as vice president of the high school thespian club. She’s also the dance captain for show choir.

Susan Denney, choir teacher at Jay County High School, has taught Hummel since sixth grade.

“She’s kind of multidimensional,” Denney said. “She can dance, she can sing, she can act, she’s a beautiful girl, so she can, you know, model if she needs to. Lots of times you’ll have artists who have this one thing that they’re just really good at, but I think she’s got a lot of choices in her future with a career.”

Wills worked with Hummel while filming “Bloody Mary,” a movie about a teen girl who joins her friends testing the folklore ritual “known to bring terror to those who don’t believe it’s real,” he said. He added the movie will be submitted to future film festivals and will be available on DVD soon.

What first impressed him about Hummel, Wills said, was her prompt response when asked for a video audition. He wanted her to recreate a scene from “The Blair Witch Project,” and he said he knew then she had the role.

“When she left out the room, I looked at (my team) and it was pretty much unanimous,” he said. “She killed it — no pun intended. She did a very good job.”

Hummel’s latest film, “Moira” — a short thriller film about teens abducted by a human trafficking ring — was shot in Fort Wayne when coronavirus restrictions began to be lifted in Indiana. “Moira” is expected to be released this winter.

“ParaGenex Terror of the Kitai,” a horror film about a group of Hoosiers defending their town against voodoo predators, is another acting role she recently finished. The film is currently in post production.

She’s set to film “The Text,” a movie about the consequences for teens texting at the wheel, sometime next year. At the end of the month, she will be filming “Hawaii.”

The first couple weeks at home during the lockdown were difficult because she didn’t have much to do, she said, but she found new ways to work on her craft. She took Zoom acting classes with Flowers more often, and with her extra time she studied films and other actors. She was also able to dive more into her character for Moira, Amelia “Moira” Russell.

Hummel explained her goal is to be successful, by which she means being able to make acting into a full-time career. Whether she is doing commercials, theater, TV or another medium, she doesn’t mind. She dreams about acting for the Hallmark Channel someday, although performing on Broadway would be a dream too, she said.

Flowers said he pictures Hummel as a full-time actress in the next 10 years. He added she might be an acting coach or choreographer as well.

“A lot of people misconstrue that,” he said. “A successful full-time actor is someone that is acting and is able to pay their bills and make a living off of doing so, which doesn’t mean that they’re the star of the movie, it just means they are constantly working and they’re doing something within the industry.”

In November, Hummel and her friend Anna Heath directed the JCHS production of “Junie B. Jones.”

Denney said she has seen Hummel blossom into a leader in the past few years.

“She’s a pretty shy, humble girl, and so I’ve really seen her push herself out of her box,” Denney said. “She’s really had to push herself out of that shy box … I’ve loved watching that process.”

Hummel said she loves acting because it’s relieving to forget the world for a moment and “be someone completely new.”

“Even as an audience member, you walk in to watch a show and you can sit down and you can enter this completely new world for two and a half hours, and all of your stresses from outside your life, they’re just gone,” she said. “I think there’s something so magical about that. It can really transport you to somewhere else.”