Checking in on: Michael Starr

Five years ago, 18-year-old Michael Starr strutted into Andrews Hall and knocked the socks off the city’s Cultural & Fine Arts Commission’s Student Creative Arts Award judging panel with his singing, dancing and acting audition.|

Five years ago, 18-year-old Michael Starr strutted into Andrews Hall and knocked the socks off the city’s Cultural & Fine Arts Commission’s Student Creative Arts Award judging panel with his singing, dancing and acting audition.

Fast forward five years, and Starr, who won the award that year, has graduated from UCLA’s prestigious musical theater program. He is already booked solid, performing in acclaimed regional and national productions.

Next month, you can catch Starr in “A Charlie Brown Christmas” with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Peanuts characters come to life in this live-action family-friendly performance, with animated backgrounds on the big screen, dancing and singing - all with live accompaniment by the symphony, chorus, dancers and narrators.

He has performed as a professional actor in multiple regional productions in Los Angeles and New York. Last week he finished up a run in “Big Fish” at Musical Theater West, Southern California’s premier musical theater company. The musical came to LA from Broadway and used all the original Broadway sets and costumes.

But Starr is perhaps most proud of his work as Eros in the production of “Psyche” that just finished its run at the Greenway Court Theater in Los Angeles. In this modern retelling of an ancient Greek myth, this modern opera is a stylistic musical hybrid of post-modernism and rock. Starr garnered fantastic reviews for his performance of Eros.

There are hundreds of aspiring actors and actresses in Sonoma and Starr is a great example of a local student currently living the dream. While a star performer at Justin-Siena, Starr said that his passion for the performing arts started when he attended summer camps at the Sebastiani Theatre. A a teen, he helped out at the Rhoten Summer Camps. Starr said: “It all started in Sonoma.”

He added: “I’m having the time of my life performing and living the dream. The insanity of jumping from project to project is a joy that I am so thankful to call my career.”

You can follow Starr’s career at mjstarr.com or catch him in San Francisco in “Charlie Brown” Dec. 19 to 24. sfsymphony.org. Applications are being accepted now for the 2015 Cultural & Fine Arts Student Creative Arts Award – sonomacity.org. 

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