Mount Olive teen lands, delivers role of a lifetime on UNC Chapel Hill stage
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on September 3, 2017 10:52 AM
Isabelle Moore takes the stage playing Rose Alvarez during a production of "Bye Bye Birdie."
Isabelle Moore takes the stage playing Rose Alvarez during a production of "Bye Bye Birdie."
Isabelle Moore takes the stage playing Rose Alvarez during a production of "Bye Bye Birdie."
Isabelle Moore talks about her passion for musical theater and what her plans are for the future as she sets out to reach her goal of performing on Broadway.
Isabelle Moore spent her summer lighting up the stage and earning rave reviews in "Bye Bye Birdie" on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill.
She auditioned back in March for the opportunity to train, rehearse and perform as part of a high school cast at PlayMakers Repertory Company, a professional theater company in residence at UNC.
The 17-year-old got a callback for the female principal role of "Rose" and then had to sit back and wait to see if she made it.
She found out a few weeks later, although it seemed like much longer, she said, recalling the moment the cast list was posted online.
"NeeNee (grandmother Frances Williams), she cried and mom was jumping up and down," Isabelle said. "Immediately we had like a mental list of people I needed to call and let know."
"I was hitting 'refresh' all day," said her mother, Karen Williams.
Isabelle was upstairs when all this unfolded, she said, when she heard her mom say, "Oh, my God, you got it!"
"I immediately knew what it was because that's all we'd been doing for the past week, just checking as soon as we woke up, before we went to bed, to see if they did it at one of those weird times to shake us up," she said. "Yeah, that was a good day."
Rehearsals leading up to the eight performances in late July were frenetic and exhilarating, Isabelle said.
She and her mother drove back and forth every day for rehearsals, until the last 10 days when they stayed in a hotel to be closer for the weekend shows.
This was not the Mount Olive teen's first introduction to treading the boards and sharing her talent as a singer, actress and fledgling dancer.
She has amassed quite a resume over the years, including performing with the Sampson Community Theater and Faison Arts Company, as well as being accepted for a summer stint at Joffrey School of Musical Theater two years ago.
And while each experience was beneficial, this past summer raised the bar, she said.
"It was the most professional place I'd ever been in," she said. "The director was from New York. He's done a bunch of off-Broadway plays and the choreographer had choreographed a couple of national tours.
"They really worked you and I loved that. I realized just how much I loved the work. It was addicting."
The efforts paid off, as she gained an unexpected recognition during the final performance of the run, a Sunday matinee.
There were two awards given out when the show ended, one more directed to the theater tech students, the other the Jeffrey T. Meanza Excellence in Theater Award.
"They were giving it out and they were talking about all the qualities that the recipient had and you had to be nominated by the director, the choreographer, costume director and stage manager, you had to have all these recommendations," Isabelle said. "Then I realized that some of the compliments that they were reading out were some that had been already to me by several people.
"And then I was like, 'OK, you've had the best summer you've ever had so don't you dare be disappointed if they call out another name; this is the award in itself.'"
The name they called did turn out to be hers, though, made even more meaningful because so many family members were in the audience that day.
She modestly shies away from sharing the compliments and comments made about her on the stage that day, "because that feels weird," but shared that one of the biggest things pointed out had to do with her growth throughout the experience.
Karen had a similar realization in the midst of the announcement, especially when the comment was made that the recipient had the "most wicked sense of humor you've ever heard -- I was like, 'My God, It's Isabelle!'"
They also said the rising star is "a force to be reckoned with," Mrs. Williams said, prompting her daughter to toy with the idea of getting in a tattoo as a reminder.
The home-schooled senior already knew that acting, preferably on a Broadway stage, is where she wants to be, so this helped to reinforce that.
Her mother, though, extracted a promise first.
"I do want her to have a bit of a college experience," Karen said. "I would like for her to be a freshman on a hall, to make friends, life-long friends.
"I have been promised two years. I feel like if she has it (talent) at 18, she'll also have it at 20. I'm looking forward to her having the college experience and learning to live on her own."
They recently returned from a big college trip, checking out some of the places Isabelle is considering -- including Ithaca College and Carnegie-Mellon, as well as a planned trip to NYU, all of which have stellar schools of drama and musical theater.
For her dad, Kenney Moore, what really makes his daughter stand out is beyond all her talents.
"I think just like all my children, I'm very proud of the people they are, " he said. "She's incredibly kind and that's the thing I'm most proud of.
"When you see how the other kids respond to her, there's no diva; she's kind and they all respond....You reap what you sow; what you put out in the universe is what you get back."
The community support of their daughter was also "mind-blowing" and appreciated, Karen added.
"We had people getting carloads together" for the performances, she said. "All the people that came to see from Mount Olive and Clinton, where she's performed, and our church and hometown, we counted about 100 people."