As opening night for Singarama approaches next weekend, student groups are striving to amaze the audiences with a showcase of their talent, staging and story lines.
Singarama is Lipscomb’s annual event that brings social club members and their friends together for a performance competition. This annual tradition has been one of Lipscomb’s main events for nearly half of a century.
Joe Muchmore, a senior biology major from Boulder, Colo., has been in Singarama the past two years and will be a host again for this year’s production. He said participants are really feeling the “crunch” of doing the show prior to spring break instead of after, as its been in previous years.
“It’s definitely a little more stressful trying to get everything together,” he said. “Just trying to get the lyrics memorized and learn the songs in such a short amount of time… it’s harder to get it ready for the final performance. In the past years, the two weeks up to the show we had everything pretty much ready and were just rehearsing, whereas now we’re still trying to learn how to do everything.”
Muchmore said hosts and hostesses are currently focusing on “being confident with the harmonies, so that when the show comes, we can hit it strong and not be iffy. I think that’s really crucial for a good sound.”
He said the cast is feeling nervous excitement about the performances.
“Right now, it’s definitely stressed more than excited, but it’s a stressed excited,” Muchmore said. “It’s because we’re a week away, and we haven’t even worked everything out yet. We’ve got a lot of work to do in a short amount of time.”
This show’s theme is “Air, Land and Sea” and follows the standard Singarama format. All of the social clubs on campus have been divided into teams, and since the beginning of the semester, the teams have worked together to create a miniature theatrical production that requires using a theme, singing, dancing and staging. Winners of the show receive bragging rights for next year’s event.
Kathryn McKinley, a junior and friend of the social club Pi Delta, has been a part of Singarama for the last three years. She said the audience can look forward to a comedic, polished performance.
“What [the audience] expects to see is a whole lot of singing, a whole lot of dancing, and they better be ready to laugh their heads off and cheer as loud as they can because you won’t be able to stay in your seats,” McKinley said. “It is a whole lot of happiness and energy on that stage.”
Muchmore encouraged his fellow students to attend this year’s event.
“It’s just overall a very entertaining show,” he said. “There’s a lot of talent. It’s just a fun show to be at. When we’re practicing it, we have to see the show probably 10 times, but every single time, it’s just fun to watch and it doesn’t really get old.”
McKinley said Singarama is how she expresses herself in theater.
“This is my way to express myself once a year,” she said, “so my artistic side explodes every year with Singarama, and I can put it all on stage.”
Along with the ability to show her artistic side, McKinley said that participating in Singarama has helped her build relationships that she probably would have never had.
“I have a lot of friends in Pi Delta or SID (Sigma Iota Delta),” she said. “There are people I don’t know that are in other clubs, and they become friends. It is cool to build on those relationships and keep them going.”
The 49th annual Singarama will take place March 8-10 in Collins Alumni Auditorium. The showtimes are Thursday at 8 p.m., Friday at 9 p.m., and Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are currently on sale online at the website listed below or you can pick them up in the Bennett Campus Center lobby Monday through Friday 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Tickets are for $12 for Thursday and Friday night performances. Saturday performances are $15. For more information, to see a list of performances or to buy tickets, go to www.lipscomb.edu/campuslife/singarama/.
Nicci Carney contributed to this article.