Since last October, the Boston Globe has been chronicling Stephanie Umoh as she finishes her senior year at Boston Conservatory; the series, fittingly enough, is titled "The Education of Stephanie Umoh." Umoh was chosen for the series because she's a talented comer who's scored major roles in professional productions -- though, says the introductory piece, out of the hundreds enrolled at the school and in its "grueling" programs, only a few emerge from the shadows and into the spotlight. Said Umoh's voice teacher in October, "There's an old saying that for every one on stage on the bright side of the lights, there are probably 250,000 on the dark side."
And why should you care about the rise of Stephanie Umoh? Because she's a local -- from Lewisville, specifically, which she left three years back to become a Broadway somebody, with Boston as the layover. The series, now in its fourth part, continued yesterday with this story, which deals with the difficulties of being "a minority student at an overwhelmingly white college." Some footage of Umoh's performing "More Than You Know" at the conservatory's fall recital is after the jump. --Robert Wilonsky
