SALT LAKE CITY — Elisabeth Evans and her three sisters wore it all — everything from matching blue-and-white bell bottoms and crop tops to tie-dye beach outfits.
They were Dayton, Ohio’s, small-scale version of the Jackson 5, competing in local talent shows, performing at Chamber of Commerce luncheons and their dad’s work Christmas parties.
They hit the “big time” singing the national anthem at the Dayton Dragons baseball game.
And then one day, not long after that minor league gig, it all came to an end.
“My oldest sister said, ‘I’m too old for this,’’ Evans said with a laugh.
That oldest sister went on to become a doctor — an emergency physician in American Fork, Utah. The second-oldest started a career in finance, and the youngest became a journalist at the Deseret News. But Evans had caught the performing bug. She continued to sing and play her violin, though she did update her wardrobe a bit.
And when she got cast as Belle in her high school’s production of “Beauty and the Beast” — she was a sophomore then and was selected over a popular high school senior — she thought maybe, just maybe, she could make a career out of musical theater.
“I always felt scared, thinking maybe I’m not good enough or people will judge me because they think that’s not a real career,” Evans told the Deseret News from her New York City home. “I’d always loved it … but I didn’t have the courage to really step down the path officially until that moment.”
Now, with a Broadway credit to her name, Evans is coming to Utah to share her musical theater journey and songs that have influenced her along the way. The 28-year-old singer will perform with Dallyn Vail Bayles and the Rise Up Children’s Choir in the Broadway-themed concert on Dec. 28.
New York, New York
“What do you do to make money?”
Evans gets asked that question a lot. It typically comes right after she tells people she’s an actor.
And then she repeats it: “I’m an actor.”
Evans moved to New York City after studying musical theater at the University of Michigan — one of the top performing arts schools in the country. Moving there had always been part of the plan, but it still came as a big life adjustment for the budding actress.
“It really hit me right in the face, all that it takes to really maintain a life here: finding an apartment, finding a side job and navigating the politics of auditioning. It does hit you all at once,” she said. “You can’t move to New York and figure everything out at once.”
She’s lived in New York for six years now. She’s had weeks where she’s done as many as seven auditions, and weeks where she’s had none. She’s rolled out of bed at 6 a.m. to wait in line with hundreds of people just to be seen for 30 seconds. Now, she’s getting ready for the busy audition season — January through April — where she’ll arrange and rearrange her schedule to fit in as many tryouts as possible.
It’s an exhausting process — one that is often more discouraging than it is motivating.
“There are so many noes in this business,” Evans said. “You’ll get 100 noes before you get one yes.”
But she keeps going. Determination, after all, is the one thing she can control in a business that’s in the hands of producers and directors. That’s something she learned from her mom, a violinist and singer who, during her own performing career, kept a book of yeses — all of the positive moments that overshadowed the criticism and rejection.
“If you find that way to keep going on this wave of positivity, I think that will lead you to more success,” Evans said. “And you have to be yourself. You won’t be successful unless you are.”
Being on Broadway
Oct. 22, 2013. That’s the day Evans made her Broadway debut. She had auditioned for the Tony Award-winning musical “Once” during her senior year of college. A month after moving to New York, she was in rehearsals.
She was the understudy for three lead characters. When one of the characters she covered went on a weeklong vacation, Evans had her moment onstage.
“I don’t think I breathed at all in Act 1. I had to tell myself, ’Breathe! This is amazing, you’ve been in so many of these audiences, and now these people are paying to see you,’” Evans recalled. “And the breath came out so forcibly. I don’t know if that’s because I didn’t want it to end or I was thinking too hard on what I had to do. But it really was a dream come true.”
Covering three roles, Evans ended up onstage a lot during the Broadway run, which ended in January 2015. “Once” is a unique musical — the cast also serves as the orchestra — and getting to use her violin skills made the experience even more special for Evans, whose grandparents met as violinists in the Utah Symphony during the Maurice Abravanel days.
Evans hasn’t been on Broadway since “Once,” but she did take part in the 2015 national tour of “The Sound of Music” and, most recently, she was the Maria to Bayles’ Captain von Trapp — not to mention Belle to Bayles’ Beast — in Tuacahn Amphitheatre’s musical theater season this past summer in southern Utah.
And now, she and Bayles are reuniting for a concert that celebrates their love of musical theater — a love that, for Evans, goes back to her childhood days in those matching outfits with her sisters.
“We wanted to pick Broadway songs that really meant something to each of us individually, whether it was a big break for us in our careers or something that helped us better understand what was going on in our lives,” she said. “That’s what Broadway and theater does — you get to think about other ways of life, or you get to reevaluate your own life in the context of what you’re seeing onstage. We’ll be telling our stories, but hopefully people will see this as their stories as well.”
Editor’s note: Elisabeth Evans’ sister Erica Evans is a journalist who works for the Deseret News.
If you go ...
What: Elisabeth Evans and Dallyn Vail Bayles in “Love, Broadway”
When: Saturday, Dec. 28, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Libby Gardner Concert Hall, U., 1375 Presidents Circle
How much: $15 in advance, $25 at door
Web: eventbrite.com