Ms. Beverly Pruzina has been Woodgrove High School’s theater director for several years. She brings a high level of professionalism to both her classroom and the stage. Despite being a theater director for less than a decade, she has been acquiring her skills in acting and performance since her college career.
Pruzina’s parents encouraged her to go to Liberty University, a private Baptist college in Lynchburg, Virginia. “As a senior, I was really not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, so my parents kind of put their foot down,” Pruzina said. “Looking back in hindsight, 35 years later, it was the best thing that could have happened to me.” She spent two years at Liberty University, where she auditioned for and participated in the radio station there as an extracurricular. “I found that I really loved journalism and I really enjoyed broadcasting.” She started considering that and applied to other schools.
From Liberty, she went to Temple University, a prestigious school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, partly through connections with one of her high school teachers, an alumnus of Temple. She worked in broadcasting through her last two years at Temple and moved to New York City after graduating, pursuing her dreams of acting. She was picked up by an off-Broadway traveling company, putting on professional shows in various locations. “I did things that involved not only stage production, but also children’s theater,” she explained, “It opened my eyes to the world of educational theater.
In between shows with this company, she was offered a job by WCVE-FM, a PBS affiliated broadcasting station in Richmond, Virginia. “I had to be on site, so this particular show was current events and news, and I also worked hand in hand with Virginia Current, which is a nationally award winning show through PBS,” she said. From there, she landed on a PBS show in Washington DC called “Behind the Lines.”
“The life of broadcasting became very difficult, getting paged, working for news and for PBS, we were the team that went out on 9/11, breaking that news,” Pruzina expressed, who had started a family by then. “Adding your own children to the mix changes your world completely.”
“When my oldest child was in middle school, I thought about my roots of doing children’s theater. Word got out at Eagle Ridge middle school that I had done professional theater and my neighbor kind of ratted me out,” she chuckled. “I was curious about it, but I ended up just directing shows as a volunteer.” Scott Phillips, the principal of Eagle Ridge, developed a strong working relationship with Pruzina and encouraged her to go back to school and receive her teaching license. She received her teaching license in journalism and English from Shenandoah University, and most recently went back to school to be certified to teach the entire theater department.
Overall, Pruzina claims that her previous career in journalism and broadcasting made her a more equipped teacher. “ I think my professional career prepared me for that, and there is a higher standard than a lot of people in my same position,” she expressed. “I know what it’s like to work in a very stressful environment where people’s emotions run high, so I think they complement one another.”
“Every teacher will say that they want to give something back, and I think that is true,” said Pruzina, explaining the more personal reasoning behind switching to teaching. “For me personally, I wanted to settle a few scores for myself with teachers that I had.” She shared the connection with one teacher of hers in particular. “He didn’t realize how he influenced me, and I think I was connected more to that teacher than my own family,” she voiced. “I think he set such a beautiful example for me, and I wanted to emulate that in my professional career.”
Inspired by him, and wanting not to be like her less-favorite teachers, she took an “all or nothing” approach to her new career. “I was going to treat it as if I were going live on NBC. And I try to treat every day like that, to bring my very best to what I’m doing.” Pruzina’s commitment to “bringing her all,” as well as her professional acting experience gained prior to teaching, prove her credibility and excellence in her job as theater director at Woodgrove High School.