Emily Danielle Owens an eighteen year old freshman at Catawba College recently starred in her first play at Lee Street. She played the role of Columbia in Rocky horror picture show.

I recently met up with Emily and decided to ask her a few questions. First I began by asking her how it felt being the youngest cast member in Rocky. She explained that there was another cast member that was only one year older than she was, so it wasn’t all that bad.

I went to watch the play one night (not knowing what in the world I was getting myself into), and she absolutely blew the audience away! Such a young performer and such talent! She was definitely born to perform! The audience participation was so hectic and amazing that I remember at one moment, while we were dancing the time warp, I looked over to my left and this lady was crying tears of joy and dancing like there was no tomorrow!

But not only was it fun and games offstage, according to the soon to be star, Emily, there was one night that was a bit of a blooper. During patron and sponsor the original actor who played the character of Eddie was unable to attend, of course this had been planned weeks in advance so the cast knew that one night was going to be different from all the rest. The director agreed to become his understudy, and everything went great… except when it came to him and Emily’s dance routine.

There was a bit of confusion during one of their dancing numbers and for a whole chorus the director had to dance by himself! It was a wonderfully different experience overall.

Now I remember when I was a young freshman, so I was curious to know her experience so far. I asked her if freshman year was difficult for her at all. Her response, “I love it here! At first, I thought it was going to be challenging, I thought that me not getting cast in any Catawba productions was going to affect my relationship with my theatre professors and my theatre classmates, but it hasn’t at all, Catawba gives me the opportunity to continuously learn. I’m a firm believer in the importance of learning. If you’re not learning, you should probably change something.” If you didn’t get a chance to check Emily out at Lee Street Theatre, do not fear, I’m positive she will soon be starring in something else very soon.