Interview: ROCK OF AGES' Katie LaMark was Born Ready to Rock

You could say that Katie LaMark has been ready to rock from the time she was a little girl. That's because she is a self-described "studio kid" whose parents were both musicians.

"My mother is really the rocker of the two of them and my father is a much more disciplined, jazz piano player," she says. "I have a little bit of the discipline and a little bit of the edge."

And that diverse range has helped LaMark in her career. Her first big show was the 20th Anniversary Tour of RENT, in which she played Maureen. That production played the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC) in 2016.

"Being part of something that was so much bigger than myself and the humbling experience of being surrounded by people who cared enough about making things better, was one of the most humbling things that I've done as a performer," she says.

"As a person and as a performer, it was the biggest thing that has ever happened to me in my life and my career."

This weekend, LaMark returns to DPAC as Sherrie Christian in the 10th Anniversary Tour of ROCK OF AGES, a rock musical set in the 1980s about a small-town girl aspiring to be an actress and a big city bartender aspiring to be a rocker. Boy and girl meet, fall in love, break up, and live happily ever after in la-la land to the tunes of Styx, Journey, Bon Jovi, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Steve Perry, and Poison."

"The thing that I love about this show is that the music is larger than life," she says. "Everything about it really is about singing from the bottom of your soul and from the bottom of your heart."

LaMark says ROCK OF AGES requires a similar skill set as RENT, but that's where the similarities end.

"I had a great professor in college who used to say that the two things that theater must do to in order to be successful is that it either has to comfort the afflicted, or afflict the comforted," she says. "That's the difference between what I was doing on the RENT tour and what I'm doing now."

"On the RENT tour, we were afflicting the comforted by reminding them that this was something that was very real that was happening in the 90s, that people were dying ahead of their time and no one was helping them."

LaMark says that while ROCK OF AGES is much lighter than RENT and is all about making people happy, there is still an underlying message about dreams that may comfort the afflicted.

"There's a very interesting moment at the end of the show, that we dig into when our narrator says, 'the dreams you come in with, may not be the dreams you leave with, but they still rock.'"

"I think that every single audience member who remembers this time in their life when their dreams were sky high, they may have a sadness in them in which they wonder if they didn't live up to their potential," she adds. "That's what the message of this musical is, that if your dreams and your paths change, it doesn't mean you've lived any less of a good life."

"There is something that is comforting down to the bottom of your heart when you've found out that there's nothing wrong with changing your path."

ROCK OF AGES runs February 22nd - February 23rd at the Durham Performing Arts Center. There will be a digital lottery for rush tickets. For more information visit: https://www.dpacnc.com/events/detail/rock-of-ages.

Photo by Jeremy Daniel.

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