Audrey Carr, Arts & Tech Editor
@audreyccourant
Imagine standing on stage with the spotlight on you while the applause from the audience feeds your energy, and the excited adrenaline through your body as you anticipate the next show. Senior Charlotte Jensen is well acquainted with this feeling.
Charlotte has been active in the school musicals for the past four years. She originally gained interest in theater when her two friends convinced her to do “James and the Giant Peach” at The Summer Theatre of New Canaan. “I was really reluctant to even audition. But they practically dragged me there, and it ended up changing my life,” Charlotte said.
Charlotte’s past experiences and the lessons she has learned from them have influenced her approach to every new musical she enters. “Always go in with an open mind, because every director has a different vision and no two casts are alike,” she said. “It’s all about adapting to the change and learning from it, but also about having fun and soaking in every moment.”
Charlotte made her most recent debut as Ursula in the winter school musical “The Little Mermaid” and has come a long way in her musical theater career. Charlotte has performed in 12 of the school musicals but her favorite role she has ever played was Ursula. “It’s fun to play an evil witch and be the villain. There’s lots of room to have fun with it, and I enjoyed every minute,” she said.
From a vocal standpoint, Ariana Grande, who Charlotte has been listening to for the past ten years, has had the biggest influence on her voice. “I have a habit of adding riffs; a repeated chord progression or refrain in music to songs, which is something that my friends tease me about all the time,” she said.
A video posted on the high school theater Tik Tok account exemplifies Charlotte’s vocal talent. She was singing “Poor Unfortunate Souls”, which is the final number of Act 1 of “The Little Mermaid.” It was one of our tech rehearsal days, so a few nights before the show opened.
The video went viral with approximately 534.7k views shortly after its posting. “I was pretty shocked,” Charlotte said. It was exciting to everyone in the department that one of our number’s was going viral online, and it made us feel validated in all the hard work we put in over the months.
As her time in the high school theater department is coming to an end, Charlotte is undecided on what college she wants to attend, but plans to study musical theater and pursue it as a career.
“I remember being told all the time my freshman year to take in every moment. It all goes by so fast, but I think it’s something you don’t fully understand until you’re a senior yourself.”
