Home > Current Buzz > Kylie and Charlie in Aussie FAME (Sydney)
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You will remember their names
Oct. 7, 2010 by Rob Bates

WE ARE FAME-ILY: Charlie Bartley and Kylie Fisher. Photo: John Appleyard

It’s been a film, a TV series and a musical in 25 countries for more than 20 years and this week FAME opens at the Capitol Theatre with two Eastern Suburbs cast members.

Kylie Fisher, of Centennial Park, and Charlie Bartley, of Vaucluse, have performed in almost 150 shows in Brisbane and Melbourne and both said they could still hardly believe their luck.

“FAME was going to be my last musical theatre audition ever,” Fisher said. “I couldn’t get through dance auditions because the younger dancers coming through are so good now. Having FAME as my debut musical has been such a great opportunity and awakening.”

Fisher said the theatre was worlds apart from her five years “doing the Sydney gig scene” with her band, Selah, and solo piano work.

“You’re not struggling five nights a week performing to a pub where everyone’s there to get drunk,” she said “They’re 100 per cent there to enjoy your performance.”

Bartley got into the cast after coming second in season two of So You Think You Can Dance - a feat that he said turned his life upside down.

“I’d always kind of dreamed of that, but I’d never really realised it would come true,” he said of making the final. “I just knuckled down and did what I had to do and the next thing I knew I was standing there in the last two.”

Bartley said offers for work had not stopped since then and suddenly he had to manage 40 new friends on Facebook every day.

Fisher said she’d also brushed with a less than ideal side of fame when one fan began stalking her after a show in Melbourne.

Despite the intense focus of a national tour, both performers said they were still excited to take the stage each night and loved the “FAME-ily” they worked with.

“I would safely say that no show is the same as the show before it,” said Bartley. “Because we’re playing schoolkids we can get away with being a bit raw and extra big in some bits.”

Fisher said keeping the show fresh was extremely important and that the experience had taught her to roll with the punches.

“Props break or go missing, people forget lines or say the wrong lines,” she said. “When stuff goes wrong you’ve just got to sail on.”

FAME: The Musical will open at the Capitol Theatre this Saturday, October 9. For tickets or more information visit www.famethemusical.com.au or call 1300 723 038.

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