RUMFORD — Richard Russell didn’t make the cut when he auditioned for a rare position in The Juilliard School’s acting program last January.

But he gained a wealth of experience and is continuing his passion to become an actor.

Only 16 when he performed two very different play monologues in front of three “judges” sitting behind desks at The Juilliard School’s audition room, he was thanked for his performance, then left to attend a Broadway play with his parents, Lisa and Ron Russell.

The audition room was large and stark, and those performing in hopes of attending the prestigious school were given only a chair as a prop. A dozen or so people from that audition of nearly 1,000 hopefuls were chosen to attend.

During the audition period, he got to meet people from all walks of life and from many different nations.

“There was such a diversity of people. It was completely different,” he said of the midtown Manhattan world-renowned school and performance center at Lincoln Center.

He plans to audition again at Juilliard, when he feels more prepared.

Since graduation last June from Mountain Valley High School, where he was the only student from the Rumford school to ever audition at Juilliard, he has pursued his passion.

He’s a sound, performance and visual major in a bachelor of arts program at the University of Maine at Farmington.

He was a lead actor in the college’s fall play, “Rabbit Hole,” in which he portrayed the teenager who ran over a young boy, which led to the unraveling of the marriage of the boy’s parents.

In the spring, he plans to appear in an as-yet-unannounced play directed by well-known UMF director Jane Decker. Although he doesn’t know what that play will be, chances are it will be dark, because that is what Decker specializes in.

As a performance major at UMF, Russell loaded up on applicable courses during his first semester that included fundamentals of acting and performing scenes from a wide variety of plays. And he is enrolled in a between-the-semesters course on stage production.

He is also a member of Theater UMF and is helping to organize a trip to see a professional production in Portland.

When the spring semester begins in mid-January, he will become a double major by adding psychology.

“So far, college has really gone well,” he said.

While working toward his degree, he is also exploring other ways to become more professionally involved in the acting field.

“Right now, I’ll confine myself to Maine, but I’m leaving myself open for other options,” he said.

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