After collecting the previous three awards presented at Singarama this weekend, “Totally Awesome” took home a third-consecutive win after Saturday night’s performance at “A Blast From The Past.”
Thursday night the group took home the award for Best Theme; Friday evening the group won for Best Music and won Saturday afternoon for Best Staging.
Saturday night at the last showing of Singarama, the show collected the fourth and final award available: Sweepstakes.
“Winning all four like that hasn’t happened in five years,” assistant director of “Totally Awesome” senior Reese Lusk said. “We knew our show was good. We just didn’t know it was that good.”
One unique thing about “Totally Awesome” is that 70 percent of the show’s composition featured new actors, students that have never been a part of Singarama before this year.
“Training this bunch of newbies was a challenge at times,” Lusk said. “There were late nights, hard nights. But we really worked hard to break down a lot of those barriers and eventually became a team.
“The other shows were amazing. We were stunned with what we saw. I’m just honored to have been an assistant director of this.”
“Totally Awesome” was directed by junior Bethany Rowland, a directing major at Lipscomb. According to Lusk, no matter how late or hard a rehearsal was, Rowland never lost sight of her vision and the direction of the show.
“Bethany is probably one of the best directors Singarama has ever seen,” he said.
According to Rowland, a Singarama show originally made her want to attend Lipscomb after she visited during her junior year of high school. Now having directed “Totally Awesome,” Rowland claims this experience as “one for the books.”
“I am so shocked and so honored,” she said. “This team and this journey were amazing. I’m so proud of them and the work they put into this show. It was definitely the best way to end my Singarama career.”
Junior Grace Moore starred in the show as Mia, an aspiring journalist who wanted to break out of the social construct that comes along with being “the pretty one” or the “celebrity reporter.”
Set during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, the audience followed Moore as she eventually established herself and exposed the truth behind an Olympic controversy.
“We originally got the idea because of a pin I have on my jacket,” Lusk said. “We saw it and just knew it would be a good location to set our show.”
Moore said that participating in a show of this caliber was one of the biggest blessings of her time at Lipscomb thus far. Being a part of a Sweepstakes show is something she says she will always remember.
“It was such a humbling experience, and I’m so honored to have been a part of this show and to win every night was beyond incredible,” she said.
Photos by Anna Rogers