|
Temple Theaters' "Ragtime" featuring Lauren Rooney as "Mother"
 |
Rooney |
|
She’s been singing forever. “I was raised by my grandmother — the only other person in my family with a good singing voice — and she sang to me from the day I came home from the hospital until the day she passed.”
The senior communications major grew up in Northeast Philadelphia and remembers the time her first-grade teacher heard her sing. “She told me I had a nice voice, and from then on no one could shut me up!”
When she was about 12, her grandmother took her to see “The Phantom of the Opera.” She loved it.
“When the cast came out to take their bows, I started to cry and couldn’t stop until we were halfway home because I knew that musical theater was exactly what I wanted to do.” At her own curtain calls in high school productions, she started a tradition of her own: “rubbing my nose to honor my grandmother, and she would rub her nose right back at me from the audience. That will be with me forever.”
She applied to Temple and to NYU, but “I just knew that Temple was where I wanted to be. I’ll never forget the day I got my acceptance letter. It was Christmas Eve. I was very proud.”
Rooney says she feels “blessed to be a part of ‘Ragtime.’ It’s giving me the opportunity to work with so many amazing Temple professionals as well as the close-knit and talented cast.
“The role of Mother feels like it was created for me. The music is beautiful and the story more powerful than I could ever have imagined. The biggest challenge is finding ways to tell the story of such an amazing woman, someone who could only dream of the freedoms women have today.
I want to do my part to help the audience feel the changes that she goes through in the show.
I believe that I am on the right track.”
Read more about Chartel P. Findlater as "Sarah" in Temple Theaters' production of "Ragtime"
— Harriet Goodheart
|
