Coming along a little quicker this time, it's Mekia Gay! I first laid eyes on Mekia in a 2020 promo for QCT's production of Chicago, where her intense performance immediately drew her right out of the background and caught my eye.
At around that time -- as that production, nearing its opening night, was postponed as the pandemic hit in full -- I was hoping to audition lots of women in Quincy for Keys & Kingdoms, and asked fellow Chicago cast member Mason to seek out Mekia in particular. Mekia got back to me and was by far the most committed to my virtual audition event; she read the monologues of four characters and ended up cast as Maer.
It was years later that the theatre finally did put on that production of Chicago, and as we started putting the voice casts together for our TAPAS projects, I also worked with Mekia in ensemble for Beauty and the Beast, and saw her in Mame and Legally Blonde. A pastry chef by trade, she often bakes things for the cast when she's doing a show, and I also see her now and then doing livestreams where she sings people's requests. Very prolific, as you'll see, and a very strong performer, I'd say that's a needed quality for Maer, a character who's ever the foil to the rest of the group, the one who fuels most of the interpersonal conflict within the cast of heroes.
Last year she was in Rent as Mimi... let's euphemistically call that show a production so good it put me in the hospital... see the blog entry from last May. In fact, that's not a euphemism at all; after all, most of why I was so upset was how good it was. But before I realized I had to get help, I definitely did my best to focus on how mind-blowing Mekia's performance was. One of my better takeaways from that production... Maer has always worn heels, but in the upcoming, very minor redesigns of all the characters, I'm looking to make absolutely sure she rocks those heels just like Mekia did in Rent.
And I've most recently seen her in Peter Pan, playing... well... the title role. I was immediately gleeful when I heard she was cast, getting the information first as whispered rumors on the set of The Hobbit before it was officially announced. Peter Pan is a very important show to me; my "theatre bug" moment was playing Captain Hook at a summer camp in 2003, something that a lot of my relatives who saw it still won't stop talking about. I couldn't wait to see it, and... yeah... I've never seen someone so completely disappear into a character before. Incredible stuff.
Her Facebook profile claims her as a singer-songwriter, and when I asked her about that when she was first auditioning for me -- always being on the lookout for someone who can write songs; I want a strong musical element in these projects but, as mentioned in the first Draw blog, it was friggin' hard at the time to keep my hands on a composer -- she said that she didn't really have the credentials to claim that, hadn't really done it in a while. But later on... last year or earlier, I think, I'm pretty sure it was before Rent... we did have a meeting to talk about putting together a song. Just one at first, but I hope more later. We'll get back to it later.
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