First came a series of auditions for potential colleges.

Then Kylie Edwards’ senior year at Gateway High School started, with major roles in a pair of theatrical productions on the horizon.

As graduation approached, she turned in an award-winning performance in Pittsburgh. And after having earned her cap and gown, she traveled to New York City to bring home yet another top honor.

“Now I’m in a show called ‘Memphis: The Musical’ at Lincoln Park Performing Arts,” she said between late-July weekend performances at the Beaver County charter school. “After that show is over on Sunday, my summer will actually begin. I will have actually nothing to do, which will be weird.”

It also isn’t quite true.

Those college auditions resulted in Kylie’s acceptance to Carnegie Mellon University, and she’ll be spending a good bit of August getting ready to move from Monroeville to a campus dormitory.

But she should have plenty of time to reflect on her accomplishments of the past year, culminating with her selection as Best Dancer, with an accompanying $2,000 scholarship, during June’s National High School Musical Theatre Awards.

“It was absolutely incredible. I made so many friends,” she said about her experience in New York with other nominees for what commonly are called the Jimmy Awards, named for Broadway producer James Nederlander.

“And even though it was a competition, it didn’t feel like that. We were all just learning and putting on a show, like we all enjoy doing, and everyone was so equally invested in the work.”

In May, judges for the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera’s Gene Kelly Awards chose Kylie as Best Actress among six finalists who performed in high school productions. She played female lead Janet Van De Graaff in Gateway’s 2022 musical, “The Drowsy Chaperone.”

“We were supposed to do it two years ago, before the pandemic, and I was cast as Janet. But then, obviously, the world kind of shut down,” she said. “We were just really excited to have the opportunity to do it again with kind of a different cast, because most of the people who had been cast before had graduated.”

She enjoyed portraying a 1920s-era Broadway star who contemplates giving up the stage for marriage.

“I think it was the first role where I really got to bring all of my dancing, singing and acting training together equally,” Kylie said. “Janet does a lot of dancing, which I have the most training in, so it was a lot of fun to get to do that on stage. And with the singing, she has two huge numbers that are really fun to do.”

Helping direct “The Drowsy Chaperone” was Larry Cervi, who subsequently stepped down after leading productions at local schools since taking his first teaching job as a 22-year-old in 1958.

“I thought it was a privilege to bring his last directorial project to life,” Kylie said. She also performed in Cervi’s penultimate project, Gateway’s January production of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie.”

In the meantime, she awaited word about the performances she hoped would lead her to Carnegie CMU, her top choice for continuing her education.

“Usually, it’s like you’re in and you’re out. You sing your two songs. You do your monologue, and that’s it,” she said about demonstrating her talents for colleges. “But for Carnegie Mellon, I had to go through six rounds of auditions. And it was nerve-wracking, because after every round, there would be a cut of people. It was just kind of doing my best and hoping for the best, quite honestly.”

She is pursuing a bachelor of fine arts in musical theater at one of the nation’s top schools for the arts, boasting graduates from the late Andy Warhol at Carnegie Tech to Stephen Schwartz and Ted Danson a generation later, to Patina Miller and Leslie Odom Jr. in the 21st century.

“They have alumni doing really important and meaningful work, and I’m excited to be part of that legacy of students,” Kylie said. “I’m just excited to start, in general.”

When it comes to her success, she gives credit where it’s due.

“My friends have really been kind of a backbone for me going through all of this,” she said. “It can be kind of isolating, especially during the audition process, when you feel like you’re being judged for who you are as a person as well as your talent.

“But my friends have been nothing but supportive, which has really helped me in my success. And I thank them.”

Related:

• Larry Cervi caps his career with Gateway’s ‘The Drowsy Chaperone’

• Pittsburgh CLO’s Gene Kelly Awards recognize top high school musicals

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