Celebrating 25 Years: Amy Carson & Kari Burns

As we approach our 25th Anniversary production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat this summer, we’re celebrating by looking back through our history.

Amy and Kari have been a part of First Act for over 20 years now! We were excited to talk with them about the ways they learned to strive for excellence on and off the stage all while glorifying God.

“I would say Les Mis was my favorite, and partly just the story and the music and everything, but also during that show, I put a lot of thought into my ensemble character, and so I like felt like even when I was just in the background I had such meaning on stage singing those songs. Just the story as a whole, the show as a whole was just such a cool thing to be a part of.” 
 
“Whenever I think about my favorite shows, we were talking about it on the way here, a lot of times what I think of as a favorite show is often a little bit less related to the show itself and more related to the community of people. A lot of times my favorite shows were the ones with all my favorite people in them, I would say.”
 
“What I think is so unique and what makes us special as an organization is that we bring together people who want to do theater in a way that glorifies God, and that you don’t feel like you’re like I’m in this place wanting to do that but the other people I don’t know, and that we can talk about that freely and that we’re encouraging each other.”
 
“CYT really was a super meaningful part of both of our lives like times of growing and it doesn’t mean that things weren’t hard. I mean, like learning to face, and I don’t even mean failure, like no one is saying that you’re a failure, but if there’s a part that you really wanted, and you didn’t get it, very practically those were things that we were all dealing with of being able to process through like okay, this doesn’t mean I’m a horrible person or that no one loves me which is really easy to infer as a kid if someone didn’t pick me it means that I’m not good enough or they don’t like me.”
 
“I do, I agree, I think the support part is we’re all here to have fun and try and like excel, like we want to be good at what we do, but yeah we want the Lord to be glorified, and I think that there’s just a lot of things that I’m really thankful for.”

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