Lecil James takes tiny sips from a warm mug at Spruce Tree Coffeehouse on Main Street or bites of a rainbow roll at Stonefish Sushi & More in late December while she recounts her life story as a native of Southwest Colorado.
Upon request, she's brought a pocket-sized notepad, binder and resume to help remind her of her many accomplishments as an artist, entrepreneur, musician, performer, student and volunteer.
Beside her is a present that she's just bought her boyfriend for Christmas.
She and her boyfriend share a passion for theater, music and crafting things with their hands.
“We built a zombie for Halloween,” Lecil says about how they collected pieces of wood shaped like bones and other materials like fabric to form the zombie's ligaments.
Besides spending time with her boyfriend, Lecil enjoys reading novels, especially science fiction and fantasy literature by Tamra Pierce. But one of her life's main pursuits and passions is drama and musical theater.
“I like getting into different characters that aren't too realistic,” Lecil says. “Because the world is realistic enough.”
She has also been using her free time to recreate a Renaissance gown with built-in corset, boning and hoop skirt.
“I'm a Rennie,” she says about her passion for Shakespeare and the Renaissance Era.
She has helped coordinate the Mancos Renaissance Faire, besides helping to produce and star in 19 theater productions since she was 7 years old.
She's performed with Durango Arts Theater, Whirligigs Art House in Cortez, Montezuma-Cortez High School, and she's just returned from the Colorado State Thespian Conference in Denver.
“We had professional actors talk to us about how to get your foot in the door,” she says about the conference. “I learned how to audition. I thought I knew how to audition; I learned I didn't have the first clue about how to audition.”
Apparently, she's put what she learned at the conference to good use during her audition for “The Foreigners” production in the spring.
“It wasn't a case of, ‘Oh, no one else can play the part, so Lecil can do it,” she says about how she scored a part she really wanted.
It's the first male role she's had since playing Willy Wonka with Whirligigs Art House in Cortez.
“He's a froggy, bratty, cockney character. … I wanted a character to play over the top and have a lot of personal experience to draw from.”
She's able to draw from real-life experience in order to re-create her British and Scottish accents, she says as she slips in and out of a cockney accent.
After the district wasn't able to help her and other members of Stage Dweller Productions get to the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, this summer, she found another way to get there.
It's the way she was raised, she says about how she creates opportunities for herself.
“If it's not available, I make it available,” Lecil says.
She was able to raise over $3,000 to get one of the 50 groups that were invited from around the world to Scotland for the Fringe Festival, the world's largest art festival.
“I asked everyone. … I dressed up in a suit and went up and down Main Street explaining why people should contribute to this cause,” Lecil says about how she was able to raise the money.
She's a pro at working and having fun at the same time; she's been doing it since she was 7 years old.
Her first on-the-air job she had was as a second-grader in KSJD's High Desert Kids Radio show.
“It's actually still on the air,” she says. “It's been on for nine years.”
Her first leadership role was for the “Evolution of Rock” for Whirligigs Art House.
“I was in charge of set, lighting and sound and getting all that set up.
“And so I think that's where I really figured out that I could do this for a living,” Lecil says about theater.
She's now working at Children's Kiva Preschool, Rocky Mountain One Stop and as a theater teacher for the Cortez Cultural Center.
“We worked on making sure that we were able to get the sound we needed,” she says about her most recent Intro to Theatre session at the Cultural Center's outdoor amphitheater.
She holds her throat for a moment while saying she's nearly lost her voice from the strain of teaching projection.
Projection, pantomime, improvisation, character development and a host of other stage terms are what she's taught her students, who range in age from 7 to 17, so far.
“I am teaching an acting class because I have always wanted to have acting classes available, and they just haven't been,” she says, as to why she's offering them.
Teaching this class is just one of many other examples of what Lecil does when she runs into one of life's many roadblocks. Instead of giving up, she takes her keen sense of follow-through and runs with it.
“Sadly,” she says of having lived in Southwest Colorado all her life, but it doesn't seem to bother her too much.
She was 8 when she and her mom moved from Mancos to Cortez. Now, she's 15, although upon meeting this taller-than-average teen, one might think she's in college.
“No, really, I'm just starting high school, I promise,” she says she's often forced to answer when asked, “How old are you?”
Her precocious life keeps her busy while she saves money for college and studies as a sophomore at Southwest Open High School.
“Oh my gosh, it's amazing,” Lecil says about her recent transfer to SWOS.
“I'll have my first two years of college finished, and I'll almost have a degree through PCC,” Lecil says about her dual enrollment as a junior and senior at SWOS with Southwest Colorado Community College.
“SWOS also emphasizes volunteer work,” Lecil says.
She knows a lot about volunteering. She's been helping others ever since she can remember.
“I remember sitting in the back of my dad's VW bus and freezing my butt off; it was terrible,” Lecil says. “We would go around and deliver presents for people in need.”
Her memories with an “animal rescue squad” are more pleasant.
“It was pretty fabulous. We made T-shirts, and we raised a bunch of money,” Lecil says about her volunteer efforts for Cortez's animal shelter when she was 7 years old.
“Nature versus nurture, I guess,” Lecil says while crediting the nurture portion of that debate. But nature didn't do such a bad job with her, either.
She's evidently bright, thin, and her bone structure isn't something to scoff at.
She's used her dexterity to teach herself to dance pointe ballet.
“Others would be mortified at the fact that I'm self taught, but I don't care. I like it,” she says.
She's taken classes in modern, lyrical and ballroom dance.
“I love to salsa,” Lecil says.
She also loves to sing.
“I'm always vocally active,” she says, as she remembers performing with her mother in Whirligigs' production of “Godspell.”
“We're a musical theater family, definitely,” she says. “And my mom and I finally got the opportunity to do a couple of shows together, which was amazing.
“It was beautiful. It was really something we were able to connect to on a different level than how you would think.”
Lecil is also a musician who has played in her middle school's marching band and has had stints with local bands Quesa De Vida and The Strangers as either the bands' manager, keyboardist, singer or guitarist.
“I pretend to know how to play the guitar,” she says. “I try really hard to play the fiddle. ... I like to play instruments where the key is always the same.”
She says she's best at percussion instruments, including piano, marimba, and the vibraphone is her favorite.
“I'm such a nerd, it's bad,” Lecil says.
If she is a nerd, then nerds are incredible entrepreneurs.
She's been hired to work at crafts fairs at the Montezuma County Annex.
She's sold her own jewelry while traveling and camping throughout California and at the Four Corners Folks Festival.
She's performed at the Cortez Farmers Market after the city granted her a busking license.
“I knit and crochet and weave and latch hook, sew. I sew really well,” Lecil says.
She's put together almost all the costumes for her high school and Whirligigs productions.
“I've done lights and sounds and props,” Lecil says. “I do scenic painting. I learned I hate painting sometimes, because two years ago my director made me do an entire wall of tiles to make it look 3-D, all these little tiles … really tedious work, but I developed some patience, sort of.
“It's a virtue I have no time for.”
She showed enough patience to show two pieces of visual art, a pencil drawing of a pear and a plaster of paris mask, at SWOS on Thursday, Dec. 22.
In the future, she wants to take time to connect with people from the past and learn what they were thinking, especially those of the Shakespearean era. She's pondering a dual major in theater and either archaeology or anthropology. But she's sure about the theater portion of that major.
“No matter where I go, there will be theater,” Lecil says. “Even if I have to do it myself, gosh dang it!”
Reach Nathalie Winch at nathaliew@cortezjournal.com.