NATCHEZ — Wes Stockstill lost a bet, but he found a new passion in the penalty.

Stockstill said he and a few friends at Adams County Christian School made a bet last semester and, although he would not divulge the terms of the proposition or what the winner received, he would say the loser had to try out for a new hobby: drama club.

“Then I got into it, and I really like it,” Stockstill said. “It opens you up more. You have to be really open.”

Stockstill said he knew very well the irony in feeling true to yourself when taking on another persona, but the feeling remains.

“I don’t really change myself,” he said. “I act like me.”

That newfound hobby, he said, helped him get a part in the upcoming movie being filmed in Natchez, “Ma.”

“I was in a car with about three other people,” he said. “We got to meet Octavia Spencer.”

Stockstill’s teenage character will be back for filming sometime next week.

“Malori is the reason I got it,” Stockstill said, speaking of the drama club teacher and high school secretary, Malori Giannaris. “She gave me a great recommendation.”

In an upcoming production of “The Wizard of Oz,” Stockstill will play the part of the wizard, a character with which he said he identifies.

“Besides getting to be a main character, I like that the wizard is trying to be a role model, a leader,” he said. “I want to be a role model, too.”

Stockstill said being a leader both in high school and in his community is important to him.

“I’m not a bad kid,” he said, smiling wryly. “If I can help anyone, I want to.”

When he is not acting, Stockstill is busy playing basketball and football or running track. Despite all these commitments, Stockstill said he planned on remaining a member of the drama club.

“Oh yeah, I’m going to do this all through high school,” he said.

Following high school, the path becomes a little murkier. Stockstill said he wants to become either a civil engineer or a general surgeon.

“Which are totally opposite, I know,” he said. “I like building things, but I like working on people and human anatomy.”

To get there, Stockstill said he would like to attend Louisiana Tech University or Mississippi State — he has not quite decided yet.

As a doctor, Stockstill said he could help people in a very real, personal way. As a civil engineer, he said he could help whole communities. Both paths, he said, are tempting.

Still a sophomore at ACCS, however, Stockstill said he has time to figure everything out.

No matter which path he chooses, Stockstill said he would like to come back and help the Natchez and Ferriday communities, where his parents, Macky and Mark Stockstill, raised him.

“I want to get out and go somewhere bigger,” he said. “But somehow, someway I’ll end up back here. If I could help anywhere, it’d be here.”
SH