Admit One: Award-winning senior decides to major in theater

Then eight-year-old Janie Carr sat in her cousin’s basement cutting out the orange paper stating “admit one” and writing down her name as the director. She ordered her cousins and little brother to keep rehearsing — they had a show to put on. Donning the sparkly, five-sizes-too-big heels and the ruffly Cinderella dress, she went upstairs with the rest of them. 

It was show time.

Carr has always loved to sing and perform in front of her family. Now a senior and 30 shows, a Blue-Star Award and a trip to the Jimmy Awards later, she has decided to take the risk and major in a program that very few people get accepted or make a career in — theater.

But this hasn’t always been the plan. Until Carr was cast as Ariel in East’s production of “The Little Mermaid” last spring, she imagined herself majoring in arts administration and working on the business side of theater, not performing on stage.

Carr had always found herself gazing at the banners for Blue Star Awards, but she never dreamed that she would get nominated, much less win, for her performance in “The Little Mermaid.” When her name was called at the award ceremony, Carr’s passion for performing was validated.

“I just love to watch her on stage,” Delia Carr, Janie’s mother, said tearing up. “She is so happy and she spreads all that joy to everyone else who is on stage. Nobody has forced her to be up there, she does it all out of her own will and joy.”

Winning the Blue Star Award meant that Carr had the opportunity to join thousands of other theater kids her age at the Jimmy Awards in New York last June. There, she would spend a whole week preparing with the best high school performers in the country for a Broadway performance and an award ceremony.

By the end of September, after Carr had spent almost every day after school working on her auditions (oftentimes putting theater over reading “Jane Eyre” or doing her AP French homework), she was finally able to record her pre-screens, which include three monologues, two songs and a “Wild Card” section where Carr is able to show what makes her unique. After the pre-screens are filmed, they’re sent to colleges. 

Carr knew that her pre-screens would have to be perfect because schools base who gets an in-person audition off their pre-screen. Since the schools Carr wants to attend have 2 to 5 percent acceptance rates, accepting an average of 12 applicants into the theater program, Carr is pushed to work even harder to be one of the 12.

“I think it’s a grueling process mentally because you have to prepare yourself for that rejection,” Carr said. “A school can be saying ‘no’ because they don’t need your type or aren’t looking for you.”

Carr will be auditioning for 34 schools in Novembers through a program called College Audition Project. She knows that auditions are the most stressful part — she could be rejected, get a callback or get an offer later that day.

“[Not worrying about what other people are doing is] something that I kind of struggle with,” Carr said. “When you’re in a huge waiting room with hundreds of people and their parents, you’re thinking like, ‘what is she singing,’ and ‘what is she doing to stretch and prepare.’”

Auditions like the one for “The Little Mermaid” and other Starlight productions have taught her to prepare months in advance, causing her to worry about what everyone else is doing a little less because she knows she has done the most she can to prepare.

According to junior Lily Utt, when she found out Carr was the lead in “The Little Mermaid,” she knew that Carr would embody the character well and that all her hard work would pay off.

“She’s just a very versatile actor, singer and dancer,” Utt said. “And I think this part was really perfect for her vocal ties because she has this really beautiful, rich belt that is perfect for this type of Disney Princess ingenue type of role.”

For months leading up to opening night as Ariel, she was annotating her songs with pink highlighter, memorizing lines and googling how Ariel flips her hair. Before going on stage for the first time, Carr was pacing, stretching out her mouth and talking to underclassmen, trying to get rid of her nervous energy before she had to go onstage. Despite having a cold and having antibiotics in her system, it all went away when she stepped on stage — she felt right at home.

According to Carr, thanks to at least 30 shows during her career so far that all taught her to be more confident in herself and less afraid of failure, she gets to spend the rest of her life doing what she loves to do — telling a story and spreading joy to others through music.

“[Winning] the Blue Star award was my permission slip that I never knew I needed,” Carr said. “After going to the Jimmy Awards, I decided I was going to take that risk [and major in musical theater.] It really changed the trajectory of my life completely.”