Musical theatre seniors spent the past year preparing cabarets for Student Showcase on May 2. The theatre department asked students to explore their identities as artists and their time at CMU. Acting and directing majors will also present scenes during Student Showcase.
The Criterion sat down with biology and musical theatre double major Caymie Crome and musical theatre major Antwone Blagg to preview their upcoming performances.
What can you tell me about your upcoming cabaret?
Crone: “They allude to the fact that you’re looking forward to this final performance. Most other majors have to have a senior thesis, or a paper, or something showcasing what they learned. Instead of writing a paper or doing a research project, we do a final performance. A cabaret is basically a showcase of what you’ve learned, all of these materials throughout your four years. How are you going to pick what resonated with you the most to showcase who you are as an actor, as a musician and as a person? It’s marrying what you’ve learned about becoming other people and singing all of these songs with, ‘Okay, now, who am I?’ and ‘How do I want to put myself into the world as both someone who can transform into different people, but also someone who is very clearly myself?’”
Blagg: “I wanted to tell the story of my life. They ask us who we are as an artist, right? I wanted to show who I was growing up through where I’m at now. I wanted to focus on the theme of home and belonging. The main theme for mine is finding the people that you can call home and that you can confide in. It’s based off of ‘Home’ from The Wiz, so that’s where I got my standpoint from. Then I will end with ‘Home’ from The Wiz—I’m going to cut the song in half, like the beginning and in the middle will be the rest of the songs and stories, and then the end. We’ll have a lot of lines and transitional stuff.”
What specific experiences are you tapping into?
Crone: “You can go in and say, ‘Okay, I’m doing a kind of vaudeville kind of performance,’ meaning that it’s very choppy. I can be a bunch of different people—I can act, I can sing, I can dance, whatever. Or you can be very poignant too: ‘No, I’m doing this for me.’ So that’s more of the take that I‘m going toward. The second is, ‘Okay, I’ve learned all of these different things and these skills, but now I’m showcasing who am I?’ I’m taking how music has shaped me from when I started to sing. So from six years old, kind of the earliest memories that I have, how music has been a part of that and been a part of my identity and the way that I relate to the world throughout my entire life up until now.
That sent me down a path of ‘Oh, wait a minute.’ My perfectionism kind of took over my entire life and I was like, ‘Okay, if I don’t sing this note right, if I don’t do this monologue right, if the professors aren’t impressed with me, if the audience isn’t impressed with me, then I’m worthless.’ It was so woven into my life, which is such a beautiful thing. It became like weeds almost. It grew so far down that it was like, ‘Oh, this is all I am.’ So it became really unhealthy and once I realized that, I was like, ‘Okay, wait, why am I in music in the first place?’ I try to put that in because I like me explaining my relationship to music and performance cannot be fully fulfilled, fully told, without mentioning my relationship with God. I was like, ‘I have to have that in my cabaret for people to fully understand.’ Who I am as an artist, because I’m dealing with this.”
Blagg: “Fears of not fitting in and being alone, especially growing up and coming out as a gay man. That is a difficult thing, right? I’m not gonna go into detail of that with my cabaret, but it’s just gonna be the subtext. Mostly just the fear of ‘I don’t know who I am yet,’ and the fear of being alone. I don’t think I really struggle with it anymore; that’s kind of what I wanted to tell with this cabaret specifically. I found my home, you know, I found my people, I found the strength within myself to do anything, so that’s the story that I wanted to kind of show the world—show my friends, family and mentors. Even growing in this department, I have my new roommates that I found here at CMU, they’re my new family now.”
Can you break down your set-list?
Crone: “I have seven different songs and in between I’ll have a connecting pattern of ‘This is who I am’ and ‘This is how I see the world.’ For example, I have a song called ‘Dancing in Pairs’ from Island Song; you can kind of run wild. I did a combination between taking songs from musicals, but also songs like ‘Thank You For The Music’ from ABBA. I’ve kind of played around with this a little bit more, but most of mine are from musicals and I have it up on my Spotify. I’m opening with that then I’m switching into, well, actually I’m alluding to me as a young kid. There’s a video of me on YouTube when I was six singing ‘Jesus Loves Me, Jesus Loves You’ in church. It’s so cute because I’m terrified and a baby child. The plan is to start with that as the opener and be like, ‘Okay, this is my foundation, oh my gosh; you’re already relating to me so much because I’m showing you. This is me as a child, I was this young.’”
Blagg: “I will be starting at the beginning of ‘Home’ from The Wiz. And then I will talk about growing up and what life was like as a child. That will transition into my second song from Peter Pan: ‘I Won’t Grow Up.’ And that song will then transition into some fears and feelings of being alone. That will transition to ‘Will I’ from Rent. And then I will transition straight into my next song, ‘Run Away With Me’ from Kerrigan and Loudermilk. And then I will talk about the fears and challenges I faced. So that will transition into ‘Losing My Mind’ from Follies. That will reflect the people in my life that have mentored me and who I’m turning into. That song will transition to ‘Song For You.’ That song is usually sung for others, but I’m making it to where I’m singing it for myself. That will lead me into the finale where I give an overall view of what I just tried to portray in my cabaret. I will end with ‘Home’ again from The Wiz.”
