READY FOR WHAT’S TO COME—Above, Royal High School graduates celebrate after receiving their diplomas at last week’s commencement ceremony. At right, Vito Messina and Tyler Abbott mark their achievements with a complicated handshake. They were among the 503 students who graduated from Royal High on June 10. IRIS SMOOT/Acorn Newspapers When Royal High graduate Rachel Eisner was just a little girl, she fell in love with the stage.

As an 8-year-old in dance class, Rachel was urged by her teacher, a choreographer at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center, to audition for “Guys and Dolls.”

She tried out and got a part in the children’s ensemble. Self-described as a “big talker and loud,” Rachel and the stage were a perfect fit.

“It was wonderful just being on the stage with the makeup and the hair,” said the daughter of Ellen Schneiderman and Hal Eisner. “It was like dress-up for an 8-year-old.

“That has changed my life.”

Since then, Rachel has been a bona fide theater buff, performing in dozens of shows with local community theater groups and with drama programs at school.

It was at Royal that Rachel’s involvement in theater mushroomed from passionate hobby to full-on lifestyle. Her bubbly personality and seemingly boundless energy have made her the face of arts on campus.

For the past three years, she served as drama club president. In addition to pulling new students into theater and assisting by running rehearsals when the drama teacher wasn’t there, Rachel also organized fundraisers and kept the club’s finances in check, bringing the budget from $0 to $6,000 in her first year.

Then in her junior year, she codirected and choreographed a show called “John Lennon and Me.” The charity performance raised $3,000 for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

FINE ACTRESS—Royal graduate and theater buff Rachel Eisner, center, performs on stage as Princess Winnifred, the lead role in the high school’s 2010 spring production, “Once Upon a Mattress.” “We directed but we also built the set, we got the costumes, we did publicity. I’m pretty sure I lost hair after that one,” she said, laughing.

Finally, in her senior year, she became student coordinator of the arts—a new position created by the school specifically for Rachel. Though she was hesitant about being in leadership, Rachel said she was glad she was “forced” into it.

“I saw it as a chance to connect all of our arts programs. . . . Every department was pretty isolated from each other, so I was hoping to change that,” she said, adding that a schoolwide talent showcase this year helped pull everyone together.

Given all she was involved in, it’s a wonder she got her homework done. But she said the arts gave her discipline.

“I’ve learned the expert task of whenever you have a down minute, you know, I’m working. So I’ll be sitting backstage with a flashlight, reading something,” she said.

A member of the National Honor Society and California Scholarship Federation, the AP and honors student earned straight A’s in high school.

“She’s just a remarkable, responsible, you-wish-every-teenager could-be-like-her kid,” said Irene Silbert, who’s known Rachel since she was in junior high.

A former acting and singing teacher at CSUN’s teenage drama workshop, Silbert met Rachel at the summer program years ago and has worked with her every summer since.

Silbert is also currently directing Rachel in Classics in the Park’s “Romeo & Juliet,” which opens in July at the Theatre on the Hill at the Hillcrest Center for the Arts in Thousand Oaks.

Besides being a “very humble, outgoing, loving girl,” Silbert said, Rachel is also extremely talented, hard-working and dynamic on stage.

“She’s every director’s dream.”

But despite her talent and love for the craft, Rachel doesn’t plan to pursue a career in theater. Instead, she’s going to UC Berkeley this fall, undeclared.

Rachel said she has seen firsthand how difficult it is to make a living as an actress. And while she’s always dreamed of being on Broadway, she said, theater is not all of who she is—she wants to have a family, too.

The recent grad intends to explore political science at Berkeley but also loves kids and hasn’t ruled out the possibility of becoming a teacher. She’d be following in the footsteps of her mom, a special education and deaf studies professor at CSUN.

No matter what she does, the stage will always be a part of her life.

“I’ll definitely do community theater wherever I am. I’ve already checked it out in Berkeley,” Rachel said.