Sterling Masters, a Charlotte native, snags a leading role that showcases her skills.
Published September 29, 2009
By Lawrence Toppman
Theater Critic
The Charlotte Observer
When she was 6 years old, Sterling Masters vowed that she would make a living in Broadway-style musicals. Promise kept.
She also swore when leaving high school that she'd never be seen onstage in a classical dancer's pink tights. Promise NOT kept - and a good thing, too.
Otherwise, she might not be touring internationally with "A Chorus Line," playing a dancer too ballet-trained to fit the casting of a Broadway musical. For the last year and a half, she's been rejected during the first 15 minutes of that show eight times a week. Her hapless Lois will get the boot again tonight, when "Line" kicks off the Performing Arts Center's Broadway Lights series.
Masters also understudies four principals. Now that she's in her hometown, she'll play a leading role Friday night and in both shows Saturday: Kristine, who shares the solo "Sing."
Is it rough for Masters to get flashes of mini-stardom and then go back to her tiny role?
"This is my first experience understudying a principal on tour, so I was just honored to be cast," she says. "I find myself in the rehearsal hall more than onstage, and that part is hard.
"The first time you go on (as a principal), you don't remember a second of it. You're too nervous; you don't want to bump into anyone or be in the wrong place. By the second or third time, you're getting in the groove, but understudies don't ever feel 100 percent confident. You're always going to make a mistake, because you're not the person doing it all the time."
At 24, she lives a dream she's had since joining the chorus of "Annie" at Theatre Charlotte.
She got the kind of classical training that often shapes baby ballerinas: with her mom at the Jami Masters School of Dance, then in stints with N.C. School of the Arts, American Ballet Theatre, Joffrey Ballet School, and Kirov Academy of Ballet. In 2003, as she was graduating from high school at Charlotte Latin, she became the first North Carolinian to have won all four age-group titles from Dance Masters of America.
Yet tutus did not beckon.
"I still take ballet class when I'm in New York, but my heart was always set on Broadway. When I was grudgingly applying to college, I wrote an entrance essay about the way the lights onstage made me feel."
She left Florida State University after a year and landed in national tours of "Fosse," "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" and "Thoroughly Modern Millie."
She was the right age to handle the brutal schedule: travel on Monday, sound check and opening show Tuesday, two shows Wednesday, understudy rehearsal Thursday afternoon, five shows Thursday night through Sunday matinee. (She spent three weeks in Tokyo on the Japanese tour and tried to see it on two Mondays off.)
She's better off than most Broadway gypsies her age. She has never taken a nontheatrical job, though "Line" ends in November, and "you never know if there'll be another job. I'm auditioning now, but there aren't a lot of new musicals."
She had arthroscopic hip surgery in February. The company let her take three months of rehab at Elite Physical Therapy in Charlotte and gave her back her spot in May.
"I thought my pain was just the wear and tear of being a dancer," she says. "This is common for dancers and athletes; Alex Rodriguez (of the New York Yankees) had the same surgery at the same time.
"It was scary (to commit to the surgery). I couldn't think of what I would do if I weren't (able to keep) dancing, but I knew recovery would be easier at this age than if I were older.
"I was healed basically the day my surgeon said I would be. I didn't realize how much pain I'd been in until I was dancing without that pain. It confirmed my belief this is what I'm supposed to do."
To view the article online, go to www.charlotteobserver.com.