Chances are, if you’ve seen a someone on campus with long, curly and oddly-colored hair, you’ve seen freshman Peter Medici.

“I get a lot of compliments,” Medici said. “The first thing people will say when they see me is, ‘I love your hair!’ I just figured I’d do something fun and crazy just before college, so I dyed it the day before. It started off purple, but it’s faded to a pink-ish color.”

Medici, a theater arts major, plans to hold on to it unless a director of a show tells him otherwise.

“I’ll probably be ok for ‘Tempest,’” he said. “But I want to audition for ‘Pirates of Penzance’ [in the spring], so I might have to change it for that.”

As luck would have it, Medici, who will appear in Boot & Buskin’s “A Tempest” this month, earned his love of theater from the Bard himself.

“During my freshman year of high school, I was in a Shakespeare fall fest,” he explained. “Ten schools participated and each performed a different show with a different director of a Shakespearean company. We then got to perform in Lenox during the festival. It was the greatest experience of my life.”

Medici hopes he can someday go on to become a director or a playwright.

“I do a lot of writing,” he said. “Mostly prose and poetry, but I’m in the middle of writing a few plays. I just love how much you can do with a script on stage.”

Medici was eventually directed to Le Moyne thanks to his cousin, theater arts major Richard Charron.

“He told me how wonderful the theater program is and took me for a tour on campus,” Medici said. “I fell in love with the place.”

It’s only been a little over a month, but Medici, a member of the Le Moyne Singers and a recent participant in the annual ten-minute play presentation during Family Weekend, believes Le Moyne has lived up to his expectations and then some.

“My favorite aspect is how easy it is connect to people,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot about the way theater works, the real specific details you don’t get from just being in plays.”