Dunshaughlin singer embarks on 'Fame' journey

Young Dunshaughlin singer and actor Sean Carey has made it through the audition on the first night of RTE's new 'Fame The Musical' series, and will be seen being put through his paces at Fame School this coming weekend. If he is successful in this round, he'll go through to the live shows in The Helix. In a first for Irish television, Fame The Musical is offering one boy and one girl the chance to kickstart their stage career and land a job touring the country. The nation's young hopefuls have put their acting, singing and dancing talents to the ultimate test in the hope of clinching the dream prize of a lifetime, a lead role in the nationwide tour of Fame The Musical. When the search for the male and female lead of Fame the Musical was launched in January, thousands of applications were received and hundreds of performers were auditioned at locations in Dublin and Cork, and in London's West End, the heart of musical theatre. Seán Carey is 18 years-old and is currently living in Maynooth where he is a first year student of Media, Irish and History at NUIM. He has been involved in musical theatre for the past four years and has performed in a number of amateur musicals during that time. He has never performed professionally so to get the part of Nick would be a huge step for him and he hopes, a catalyst for a career in musical theatre. His first musical theatre audition was for an amateur production of 'West Side Story' when he was 14. He sang 'Something Coming' and was successful. Seán chose to sing the same song for his Fame School audition. He says he hoped the song would bring him into professional world of musical theatre in the same way that it introduced him to the amateur world. Soon to turn 19, he has never been professionally trained in musical theatre and only really discovered he could sing by chance. He was on a family holiday as a teenager and at a singsong in a pub with his parents, someone asked him to get up and sing a tune, so he gave it a go. Everyone was very impressed and his parents organised singing lessons for him soon afterwards. This Sunday night, in the second episode, viewers will see the performers who made it through the audition stage going through Fame School, an intense workshop phase. It's here where the judges Simon Delaney, Jacinta Whyte and Robert C Kelly, with the help of acting coach Gene Rooney and choreographer Daryn Crosbie, will decide who will go through to the live TV shows and battle it out over eight weeks, on the Helix stage, live in front of the nation. The finalists will sing for the public vote to help them secure their place in the final and, in the end, only two performers will be crowned the winners. Joining the panel for the live shows will be Erica Gimpel, who starred as Coco Hernandez in the original 'Fame' TV series, and notably graduated from New York's High School of Performing Arts, the very school 'Fame' is based on. Fame the Musical goes out on Sundays at 6.30pm on RTE One.