LBCC Talent Show Winner Savors Moment in the Spotlight

 “The whole time (I’m) thinking don’t start crying. Holding that back was very hard.” 


Kaelynn Carroll is recounting her performance at “LBCC’s Got Talent” in the Russell Tripp Performance Center on Feb. 19. Her song, “In the Stars” by Benson Boone, was “about grief, how he lost someone and being left here while they’re (passing) through a different world. They’re never going to see each other again.”


“I definitely went through a lot of hardships during high school. I lost two family members. So being able to sing something very powerful through grief, definitely made me emotional. There were times when I was singing it in rehearsal and I would get emotional and choke up at the end. But being able to embrace that, embrace grief, and get through hardships and know that in the end it’s going to be OK, I feel like that connected a lot with the audience, because you never know what people are dealing with.”


“Being able to be in the moment” with the audience, that’s why Carroll loves singing.


Carroll admits to being terrified before the performance and having times of low confidence, but takes joy in hearing all the compliments. Because after all the near tears and temporary thoughts of giving up, Carrol was voted the best performer, the talent show winner.


She loves the applause. 


“I hear it every day now, ‘Oh my gosh you’re the person, right?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ I’m very worried about being forgotten.” 


In her past acting work Carroll has gotten “a lot of evil roles,” such as the White Witch and Captain Hook. These roles are “fun, because you could never be like that in real life.”


“(The theatre’s) a safe place you can go to become something else when you’re stressed, you can embrace a character. Even those who are backstage, the people who run lights and sound can put all their creativity and arts through that and see it shine.


She arrived at LBCC not knowing that they didn’t have a theatre department, “which is really sad because of budget cuts.” Carroll is thinking about making a club for theatre, along with Tate Haywood. “I know there are students around that want to be in theatre again.”


“But my dream dream … Rachel Berry (from “Glee”), I feel very much like her. She just always has her guns aimed for New York and being on Broadway.” 


Carroll’s looking at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts college in New York to attend in the future.


“I’ve always been known as a kid that can’t stop singing.”


At a Glance


Kaelynn Carroll


Winner of “LBCC’s Got Talent” last month in the Russell Tripp Performance Center


Member of LBCC’s a cappella group Formal Houseparty, as well as the Chamber Choir


Performed in “Evil Dead: The Musical” at Albany Civic Theatre



Photo by Lilly Eberhart-Garah

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