Ever since the age of three, Sampson County native Nia Carr has been in the world of theater.
Carr graduated from Clinton High School May 22 and plans to attend North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
“Honestly, like your average little kid, just sitting there watching TV and wanting to be like them (actors on shows),” Carr recalled the exact moment she fell in love with theater. “My grandma got me started singing in church (The People’s Church of Clinton), and then dancing, acting, and it became that I was going to do musical theater.”
Carr described the first performance she ever did as “surreal,” giving her the will and want to pursue musical theater as a career.
The Sampson Community Theatre and its board members recently announced during its production of Clue that they were giving two scholarships to graduating seniors. Carr was selected as one of the two, receiving a $250 scholarship to help aid her journey to A&T.
“I have had the pleasure of working with Nia in numerous productions,” noted Angela Martin, one of the SCT board members and a theater director at Clinton High. “Some of my favorite memories of Nia is she was the youngest member of a cast for the musical She Loves Me. It was so neat to see her perform with all of the other cast members that were older than her. She was also Princess Tiana in Cinderella’s Christmas Party and she was phenomenal as that. She truly has made my step over to Clinton High School great as my Drama Club president this year. It’s been a joy to see her grow and mature, and it’s gonna be a little sad to see her leave.”
Carr was completely caught off guard when she found out she was being awarded the scholarship.
“I was sitting at my kitchen table about to eat dinner when Ms. Angela called,” Carr recalled. “She told me and I was like ‘oh my gosh.’ I was just in shock because it was genuinely unexpected.’”
To receive that type of support from the community meant a lot to her.
“The theater community has become like family,” Carr emphasized. “It’s not just the actors and actresses that became my family, it’s your stage manager, some of the board members of the theater, Mrs. Brenda Martin (chair of the community theater board), genuinely anyone who’s there to help you is there to be there for you.”
Carr was also a part of Angela’s Musical Troop as well as an honor student during her time at CHS. Martin has worked with her since Carr was in sixth grade. During that time, Carr detailed what it was like learning under Martin.
“She stepped in as a role model,” Carr recalled. “She just made sure she took me under her wing and taught me everything I needed to know about the theater industry. She got me started in her musical troop and voice lessons, teaching me everything that I would need to go to theater at the collegiate level. I’ve performed with her at Disney World six times, and that has honestly been an amazing experience as well.”
Admittedly, the first few times Carr took the stage at the most magical place on earth was nerve racking.
“It was really scary, because I’m about to get up here and perform in front of thousands of people.” she said. “But honestly, once you get on the stage and she (Martin) introduced and talked about us for a little bit and we got into the music, it’s honestly amazing. It was OK at that point because I was younger and in the background. Around the third year, she was like “OK, you have a solo” and I (thought) it was gonna be scary. She told me that I’ve got this and handed me the mic, and told me to do what I do.”
Experiencing that growth of finding more comfort in performing in front of huge crowds was something that changed Carr.
“It meant something really personal, because I knew since I was younger that this is what I wanted to do,” Carr emphasized. “This is my next step, this is my chance, this is where I’m going to be in my adulthood years, so I definitely need to get here now and experience it a lot more before I actually get to college.”
To Carr, her natural outgoing personality is something that has helped in her pursuit of theater. While she says she still gets nervous from time to time before the start of performances, she manages to put it to the side once she’s on stage. The hardest thing for her now is when the show performance is over.
“Trying not to cry at the end of a show, because at the end of every show, it’s time for the next thing,” Carr explained. “But you know that you’ll never have the exact same cast, and that just means a lot to me.”
One of her favorite performances was as one of the scabs newsboys in the performance of Newsies.
“When I stepped into Newsies, I’m going to be honest, I didn’t know what it was” she said. “(Martin) said that I was gonna tap and jazz dance. I told her “Ms. Angela, I don’t know how to tap dance” and she told me that it was OK, that I could learn. We ordered tap shoes off of Amazon and learned tap routines. We danced on newspapers, which I thought was not gonna be the best idea, but it turned out really good. I think that was my favorite show, because it challenged me, not only vocally but in cardio as well. You’re telling me that I have to tap dance while singing, or dance on newspaper without trying to fall off singing. I didn’t think that I was gonna be able to, but at the end, I just did it.”
As Carr moves on to university, she still plans to find time to come back to perform at the community theatre when she can.