Go for it.

From Silas’s earliest memory, film was always a part of him. He was only two years old when he first sat in a movie theater to watch Finding Nemo. His mom, sitting in the front row near the exit just in case he cried, always told the story of how she couldn’t believe how focused he was for the entire movie. There he was, a baby so absorbed in something that she said she’d never seen anything like it before. That moment was the first spark that ignited a lifelong love for storytelling and film.

Growing up, that passion never wavered. Every Friday after school, his mom would take him to the local Blockbuster, and they would pick out a movie to rent. This routine continued until Blockbuster finally shut its doors, and with each movie he watched, he developed a deep obsession with the art of filmmaking. But things changed when he turned 10. His dad, a former athlete who had given up his own dream of playing in the NFL to marry his mom, steered his focus toward sports. He thought it was important for Silas to follow in his footsteps and experience the world he once dreamed of but couldn’t.

Silas was good at every sport he tried—track, soccer, basketball, baseball, and golf—but it was football where he excelled. It became his identity, the thing he thought was his purpose. His dad gave him all the tools he needed to succeed. He had sacrificed his own dreams for Silas, and Silas felt as if his future was already written. But when he was 17, his life took a turn he never expected. After an injury that doctors said would end his football career, he found himself lost and uncertain of his future for the first time. After surgeries and months of recovery, he could barely recognize the person he had once been. He didn’t know who he was without football. All he saw was a skinny kid who had lost forty pounds and had scars all over his body.

Then, one day, he took a note to the school theater, a place he’d never been before. The director, recognizing him as the football player who’d gotten hurt, handed him an audition notice. Silas laughed it off at first, and simply said “I’m no actor” and the director responded “not yet.” With nothing else to do, he decided to go for it. He gave a terrible monologue, but he made it into the theater class, purely for his courage. His first play was Grease, where he was cast as the Teen Angel and a background T-bird who never left the stage. He had no lines, but he loved being on stage.

That experience led him to audition for The Great Gatsby, where he landed the role of Gatsby. Those two plays reignited his love for storytelling, and he realized that acting was his true path. When college came around, he knew he wanted to study theater at Texas State University, one of the top programs in the world. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, he pushed through auditions and interviews, eventually getting in.

The four years he spent at Texas State were some of the most unforgettable of his life. He threw the biggest parties on campus in a rundown house where the cops always showed up at the end of the night. He got into a terrible car accident when a drunk driver totaled his red sports car, found the love of his life on a neighbor’s balcony, lost many people he loved along the way, experienced more pain, fear, and hardship than he ever expected, including having an unknown individual pull a gun in his own house. He performed on some of the biggest stages with people he loved, and lost his grandma an hour before opening night of his last MainStage play. These were moments that nearly made him give up on acting entirely, but he never did. Maybe because he was stronger than he ever thought he was, or maybe because he is just as stubborn as his old man.

Yet, through everything—the highs and the lows, the pain and the joy, he grew stronger. Discovering who he was, and discovering his true path. He was no longer the confused kid trying to make sense of a new direction. He had found the passion for acting, for storytelling, for film, and for the people who shared this journey with him. His name is Silas Read Boone, and this is only the beginning of his story.