Lucia Perri is a 2021 graduate of Wheeling Park High School. During her time at the school, she was a member of the Speech and Debate Team and an involved member of the theater department both on and off the stage. She served as the President of the Park Player’s club during her senior year.

“My experience at Park was very much dictated by keeping a good group of friends around me. I definitely found that the Speech and Theater department was a safe haven for me,” said Lucia Perri.

After graduating from Wheeling Park, she made the brave decision to move out of Wheeling, West Virginia, and move to New York City. 

“For me, the biggest difference was not that Wheeling is considered a rural town and that New York is super bustling cause for me a city is a city, New York is just like 40 billion Pittsburghs,” said Perri.

Moving from a town of 26,000 people to the largest city in the United States, for many, would come as a daunting task, but Lucia shed a new perspective on why the move was so different.

“For me, the biggest difference was the class and racial differences. I went from living in West Virginia my whole life and I’ve grown up thinking I was upper-middle class and a person of color to moving to New York and finding out that I was probably lower middle class and a white person, so it was a pretty jarring change.”

Lucia attends the Ivy League, Columbia University, where she studies Film and Creative Writing. Her dream is to become a TV and screenwriter, an aspiration she first recalls gaining at Wheeling Park High School.

“I was President of Park Players and we used to do comedy sketches to perform at the beginning of meetings and that was kind of the beginning of sketch writing for me, which is what I want to do in life. It was really awesome that I had the opportunity to do that with Park Players,” said Perri.

Lucia’s biggest dream, however, is to be a writer for Saturday Night Live. Recently, she received news that that dream is a lot closer and more attainable than she once realized. Next semester, Lucia will work as an intern for Saturday Night Live making her dreams one step closer to reality. 

Living in a small town, it’s easy to fall into the mindset that your dreams of being an actor, singer, or anything of the sort will always be just a dream. Lucia Perri is proof that growing up in a small town does not and should not hold you back from following your dreams. She serves as an inspiration to many and we at Wheeling Park High School cannot wait to see what she does next.