Elizabeth (“Liz”) Lunev ‘20 fell in love with what HTS had to offer long before she was enrolled as a student. Her start at HTS came at summer camp, more specifically the performing arts camp, where she immediately felt the warmth and kindness of our community. Admitted in grade six, Liz’s dreams to attend the school she had grown so fond of came true. However, even before she came to HTS - ever since she could talk, Liz had a stutter.
“I have no control of it, but weirdly enough, the stage was the one place where it didn’t happen”, she says. “The drama teachers and counsellors are amazing here. They made me feel safe and heard. I didn’t care if I stuttered, which was really big for me. It obviously happened, but I knew I would be safe and not judged.”
Skipping ahead to her high school years, Liz was involved in the annual Senior School production all four years, landing the lead role of Molly Aster in Peter and the Starcatcher (2018) among others. She still describes the friends she made through HTS Drama as family and as “irreplaceable - you can’t really imagine another school having a program quite like it.”
And like many HTS students, she feels fortunate to have attended with her two brothers, Sam ’22 and Philip ’28. Liz even got to perform with Sam in The Drowsy Chaperone (2019) and Sense and Sensibility (2020), and Philip in Big Fish (2017). When she graduated, her illustrious drama career was honoured by the prestigious Drama Lifetime Achievement Award, an award that many of the alumni she’s looked up to have also earned.
This past summer, Liz was the coordinator of the performing arts summer camps at HTS, as she has been for a few years now. The role, described by her as “a dream” and “something she’s always wanted to do” feels simultaneously important and natural to her.
“Having the opportunity not only to teach the arts, but to help campers become more confident and love themselves through performance has been really special to me and my younger self as well”, she says.
When Liz was younger, she had always wanted to be a doctor, but as her stutter became more severe and she undertook more speech therapy, she had largely given up on that dream. But as she continued her journey at HTS, performing continued to bring her confidence to push toward the career she had always dreamed of.
“The arts taught me how to think creatively. Even in science, I think that’s a huge thing. Being able to improvise and take feedback as well. And my stutter taught me courage. It taught me strength and it taught me I don’t have control over how people react to what you do.”
Now at uOttawa attending medical school after finishing her undergraduate degree in life sciences from McMaster, Liz is understandably nervous for the rigour of her program but is filled with more self-belief than ever. She isn’t sure what subset of medicine she’d like to practice, but she thinks she’ll naturally find a home caring for kids, working with speech impediments or advocating for more comprehensive healthcare for women. “I want my patients to advocate for themselves, be honest with how they’re feeling and know that I’m here for them,” she says.
Now with Philip in grade 9 and as a part of the play, she has a meaningful reason to revisit her years at HTS and cheer on the next generation of HTS talent. She still struggles with her stutter from time-to-time, but wants kids to know “it’s wonderful to be different and to build confidence in who they are.
And as fitting finale to her HTS drama career, Liz’s final week of campers this past summer gave her the chance to perform one last dance alongside them and take her final bow on the HTS stage. Having looked up to many “pillars of HTS drama” as she puts it, she herself has now become one.