2021 Blumey Award Winners Take On NYC!

Nearly six months after taking top honors at the 2021 Blumey Awards, Best Actor Bryson Battle and Best Actress Kate McCracken reunited to celebrate their accomplishments with a special trip to New York City, organized by Blumenthal Performing Arts' Education Department.

 

They spent a long weekend exploring the city, taking in several Broadway shows, and even attending a star-studded gala celebration.

 

But more than anything, they experienced first-hand a supportive Blumey Awards alumni community, full of warmth and brimming with talent.

 

FIRST, A FLASHBACK

 

Ordinarily, the two Blumey winners would have headed to New York immediately following their Charlotte wins to prepare for the National High School Musical Theater Awards competition (a.k.a.,The Jimmy Awards) but last year’s program went entirely virtual, due to ongoing risks from COVID-19.

 

So, Battle and McCracken got to know each other well over the course of two intense weeks preparing for the national competition via Zoom, set up across the hall from one another at Blumenthal’s Spirit Square. Those 8-hour days of training and rehearsing helped cement their friendship and have paid off in other ways too.

 

(Bryson Battle preparing for the 2021 Jimmy Awards via Zoom)

 

Battle, who graduated last spring from Hickory Ridge High School, went on to win the Jimmy Awards! He is now majoring in Musical Theater at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Meanwhile McCracken, a senior at Charlotte Latin School, will head to Northwestern University’s Theater program next fall.

 

(Kate McCracken preparing for the 2021 Jimmy Awards via Zoom)

 

REUNITING IN NEW YORK

 

In December, the two Blumey winners finally got to catch up over the course of a few days in NYC, finding “a jolt of inspiration” from a newly reopened Broadway.

 

“It was great to see him and just to be able to have that weekend with him,” McCracken says. “...That’s really a special experience to be seeing a Broadway show, next to someone who you know loves the craft as much as you do.”

 

(L-R: Blumenthal's VP of Education Andie Maloney, Battle, McCracken, Blumenthal's Special Projects Manager Tommy Prudenti)

 

For Battle, it was special too. “It was just magical,” he says. “Honestly, the best trip I’ve ever taken to New York.” Among the highlights was getting the chance to see his first Broadway show.

 

As they watched TINA: The Tina Turner Musical, Battle says he had the jitters and that “every theater kid moment where, ‘oh, that’s what I want to do!’”

 

It wasn’t until after the curtain came down that he learned the star who had wowed them with her non-stop athleticism and dynamic performance was none other than Nkeki Obi-Melekwe, a Blumey Awards alum and 2014 graduate of Central Academy of Technology and Arts (CATA).

 

(Nkeki Obi-Melekwe starring as "Tina" in Tine: The Tina Turner Musical on Broadway)

 

They also saw two powerful plays, To Kill a Mockingbird, based on the classic book by Harper Lee and The Lehman Trilogy, which traces the lineage of the Lehman Brothers from their 19th century arrival in the U.S. to the downfall of their financial services company, ushering in the Great Recession of 2008.

 

“[These shows] were really special for me because that’s the kind of work I really love—that authentic, really bare bones story telling,” McCracken says. “… And then Tina was really just incredible because Nkeki is so insane. And to see her and be like, ‘oh my gosh, she’s from the Blumey’s’ is just mind-blowing.”

 

During the trip they also met up with Sayo Oni, the 2019 Blumey Awards Best Actor Winner, another CATA grad. He visited with them in between shows. Oni recently made his Broadway debut, joining the cast of Hadestown as a swing. Among his castmates is two-time Tony Award nominee and 2013 Blumey Awards winner Eva Noblezada (Northwest School of the Arts).

 

(L-R: Sayo Oni, Kate McCracken, Bryson Battle)

 

“In the era of ‘appreciate our swings and our understudies,’ he [Sayo] is just a walking example of how amazing those beautiful performers are,” McCracken says.

 

“We just had a little Blumey family reunion and it was a really, really fun time,” adds Battle. “...I met Sayo after I won the Blumey’s and he was such a kind human and such a kind soul, and so getting to see him again… literally living his dream was such a cool moment.”

 

McCracken and Battle also got to attend the Broadway Dreams Gala, honoring Tony, Emmy and Grammy Award-winning performer Billy Porter. (Among his many credits, he originated the role of Lola in Kinky Boots.) Broadway Dreams is an organization that supports performance training and other mentoring opportunities for youth and young adults of all socio-econonomic backgrounds with some of Broadway’s brightest talents. 

 

 

It was an inspiring evening. Battle was thrilled to meet Broadway actor Mykal Kilgore (Motown the Musical; The Book of Mormon), one of his major role models, and learned that Kilgore, like him, had been deeply influenced by Porter.

 

“[B]eing Black and queer, Billy Porter is a huge inspiration to people like us in the theater industry,” Battle says. “... just getting to meet him was out of this world and it felt like every time he was talking, he was speaking to me.”

 

They ran into other Blumey alums at the gala too, including Broadway producer Thomas Laub (Slave Play; American Utopia), a 2015 Providence Day School grad, and CATA grad Amina Faye, the 2016 Blumey Awards and Jimmy Awards Best Actress winner. Faye is currently rehearsing for the world premiere of the musical Suffs, about the American women’s suffrage movement, at New York’s Public Theater.

 

During the trip, there was even time to catch up for breakfast with Broadway composer/arranger David Dabbon (Beetlejuice; Sondheim on Sondheim) who music directs the Blumey Awards. “I adore him,” McCracken says. “He’s one of my favorite people I’ve ever worked with.”

 

 

SHARING THEIR OWN ADVICE

 

Both McCracken, who has been performing her whole life, and Battle, who got his start in high school, say they have felt tremendous support as part of the Blumey Awards family. They have their own advice for middle school and high school students who are hoping to pursue their dreams in musical theater.

 

(McCracken performing at the 2021 Blumey Awards)

 

McCracken says that she won the Blumeys with a role that felt close to her heart. She didn’t go for the showiest song with the highest belting but a piece that she felt most represented her. Here’s why: “As a young artist, I think it is really important to follow what feels right to you because there are so many different voices telling you, ‘No, do this! No, do this!’... one of the main and hardest parts of being an artist is staying authentic. And I would just say, stay authentic and love what you have to bring to the table.”

 

“I didn’t have access to theater and real, true singing until I was in high school,” Battle says, “but when I was in high school I fell in love with it and dove in head first….So I made it my whole persona where I was just like ‘theater, theater, theater, theater’ because I knew that I wanted to go to school for that and to do that in comparison to someone who’s been doing that since they were four, I had a lot of catching up to do.”

 

His advice: be well-rounded. Make sure you’re well-versed in all types of theater and surround yourself with people who have different roles, from backstage to front of house. And if you find a way to be different that  feels comfortable to you, continue to explore that within yourself.

 

(Battle performing at the 2021 Blumey Awards)

 

“A lot of time you get put in a box,” he says, “ and the reason you get put in a box is because you’ve been looking somewhere else.”