Cast Member Blog - Katie Tyler

I'm making this short and sweet today Blogfriends, because the following On Broadway Cast Member Blog speaks for itself. Today's blog comes to you from the scrumtrulescent Katie Tyler. Consider it an exploration of musical theatre through The Breakfast Club that is so fun and sweet that by the end you'll be frozen with your fist held in the air while sweet 80's tunes play in the background. Yes, it's that good.

Don't forget to become a fan on Facebook or check out our website. Also, if you're interested in audition to be in On Broadway, a second round of auditions is being held September 10th. Check out the website for more details. Ok, take it away, Katie...

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The Breakfast Club, which is one of my personal favorites, displays all of the different types of kids one will find in a typical high school setting. You have the jock, the brain, the loner, and so on. While I love this movie, and any 1980’s Molly Ringwald movie, they left out one very important high school student: the theater geek. This may be because we were all perfect students who never got detention . . . or maybe that is not true. Now being said geek since middle school, I feel offended and that it is my personal obligation to let you into the mind of the teenage theater geek and why the stage makes our world go ‘round.

I wish I could say that I grew up going to ballet class or performing as one of the Von Trapp children in The Sound of Music. Regretfully, I was not this little girl. I did not obsess with Broadway and performing until I saw Hairspray in the very last row of the Neil Simon theater. Hearing that overture gave me goose bumps and I was instantly hooked. From that moment on, I knew the stage was where I belonged and that I would do anything to be on it.

I immediately dug into research about all of the amazing (and not so amazing) musicals that have graced the Great White Way. With every show I watched, I would so desperately wish to be involved in it and I would always find a new “dream role.” Knowing it would be impossible to be in every show I loved, I would just pretend to be Anita in West Side Story or Natalie in Next to Normal. Then I found out about the On Broadway auditions and there was finally a way to squeeze all of these fabulous shows and characters into one mind-blowing production.

This process has been so amazing and fulfilling. The feeling I had when singing “Mama Who Bore Me” for the first time, without Lea Michele in the background, was beyond words. I am so thrilled that the review is incorporating musicals like Spring Awakening along with shows like Oklahoma. Two very different shows, but both shows that shaped generations of musical theatergoers. They are definitely shows that shaped me and I am sure that everyone else involved feels the same way.

Being involved in this show is the perfect way to end my musical theater education at Howard Community College and the with Arts Collective. Making the decision to go to HCC and work with the Arts Collective was such a great choice and I cannot imagine my life without it. I remember coming in as a shy freshman and being so intimidated by the people around me. I was so scared that I did not want to even audition for the fall musical; but I am so grateful that I did, because from that, I made some of my best friends. Now, two years later, I get to be a part of a show with some of those same people and I feel truly blessed.

I am extremely excited to share this show with the public. Everyone involved is so amazing at what they do, and what is even better is that everyone not only wants to be here, but they also love to be here, which is hard to find. I watch the rehearsals in awe, both at the fierceness in the room and the masterminds that brought this music to us so that we could perform it. I walk into rehearsal and I know, without question, that this is where I belong. So now, whenever I watch The Breakfast Club, I always add “the theater geek” at the end of the movie, and hopefully you will too!