Student performer used foster care as inspiration

On stage, Samia Merritt is all poise and presence - a diminutive dynamo with a lilting voice and a commanding air, delivering a monologue you can't look away from.

In class at Philadelphia's High School for Creative and Performing Arts, she's bright and bubbly - just another young woman in a pink American Eagle T-shirt, pink hair bow, and mismatched pink and black socks, poring over her precalculus homework.

But sometimes Merritt, 18, turns reflective, and you get a glimpse of just how far she's come.

When she was 11, Merritt and eight of her nine siblings ended up in foster care when their drug-addicted parents could no longer care for them.

She attended six schools before finishing fifth grade. She's cycled through seven foster homes, some of which were not good places to live, she said, ticking off some low points on her fingers: the times she was separated from siblings, the one foster mother who threw things when she got angry, and another who clashed with her over religion.

"I believe that adversity shapes a person, and everything worked out for the better for me," Merritt said. She simply won't use her difficulties as an excuse, she said.

An honors student and a theater major at CAPA, Merritt has excelled as a playwright, a director, and an actress, earning the recent attention of Philadelphia Schools Superintendent Arlene Ackerman and the School Reform Commission.

"Someday, Samia's life story is going to inspire people," said Johnny Whaley, CAPA's principal. "She will be a spokesperson for what foster children can do. She inspires me."

Merritt's take?

"I refuse to let anything stop me, no matter what the circumstances," she said. "I refuse to be a foster child that ends up badly. A lot of people see potential in me."

A recent day was a typical whirl for Merritt, who's still refining her college list but is considering Philadelphia's University of the Arts and Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University, among other schools. She arrived at CAPA - a lovely, neo-Gothic structure on South Broad Street - early and stayed until well after dark.

"I spend most of my time at CAPA," said Merritt of the 665-student school, where students must meet academic admissions standards and pass an audition. And she likes it that way; her teachers and classmates have been a strong cheering section for the last four years.

It's within the school's protective walls that she has found her voice. She's the co-artistic director of MyVision, an after-school arts program, and codirected Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, a dramatic production that premiered last week. She has also acted in a program that sends CAPA students to city elementary schools to put on productions.

Merritt works weekends at a chocolate shop at the Reading Terminal Market for extra pocket money - she wants to pick up more hours when theater season slows down - and she helps her foster mother with her day-care and catering businesses when she can.

These days, Merritt lives with a foster mother she calls "aunt," plus one of her older brothers, her foster mother's granddaughter, and another foster child. Her aunt, with whom she's lived several years now, "is family, and that's what I wanted most in my life," Merritt said.

She's signed paperwork to remain in the foster care system until she turns 21, which allows financial help with college if she stays in the state and gives her a place to stay during summers and breaks once she goes to college.

Merritt, the fifth oldest, sees her siblings - and her parents - every other Tuesday for a few hours. That's both good and tough, she said.

"Not seeing my brothers and sisters all the time is hardest for me. I miss my siblings," she said. "I missed the normalcy of a regular childhood."

She speaks in a soft, but strong, matter-of-fact voice, without asking for pity.

"In the foster-care system, you have to grow up really fast," she said. "You have to be ready to catch whatever happens."

She'd rather talk about her dreams of the stage. Merritt, who also loves drawing, singing, and making clothes, plans to major in theater in college, but she wants a school that has solid liberal-arts courses, too; she recently decided to add an education minor as a backup plan.

She has loved performing for as long as she can remember, and "I want theater so bad," she said.

This year, MyVision produced There Ain't No Use Unpacking, Merritt's play about life in foster care. She directed the play, which students performed at CAPA.

"It was hard, at first, to direct my own life," she said. "But the actors made it their own, and after a while I didn't see it as me but as someone else."

The buzz surrounding her is beginning to grow.

Last year, she won an award for her design of a balloon that promoted hand-washing. This month, she earned raves from Ackerman and the reform commission when she performed a monologue from There Ain't No Use Unpacking at a commission meeting.

"Here is a remarkable, talented, and determined young person who I believe can accomplish anything because she fears nothing," Ackerman said in introducing Merritt, who was recommended for the honor by her teachers.

After Merritt delivered her monologue, the superintendent and several others offered college advice.

That thrilled Merritt.

"I so appreciate that," she said. "When the superintendent knows your name and everyone believes in you - that's powerful."

In some ways, she's lucky, Merritt said.

"I have a great support system," she said. "Even my parents - they're still there."

Elsa Johnson Bass is another booster. In 17 years of teaching theater majors at CAPA, Bass has never seen anyone like Merritt, she said. The combination of talent and grit is astonishing.

"As an actor, she is willing to do the hard work," Bass said. "She works tirelessly on the process rather than focusing on the product."

As a director, she requires a great deal from her actors, but no more than she gives herself, Bass said.

"I call her 'my giant,' " Bass said. "I've had some wonderful students, but Samia is unique. She's always been a pleasure to deal with, even before I knew her story."