“Being on stage, every moment that I’m doing this, and acting and singing for a living I’m happy, it just gives me so much happiness.”
Krystina Alabado who is currently on the first National Tour of EVITA, where she plays Mistress, discovered her passion for musical theatre at a young age. Alabado gave her first performance when she was eight years old in one of her dad’s concerts, slightly foreshadowing her future. However, it was not until the middle of high school that Alabado “[realized] [musical theatre] [was] what [she] wanted to do with [her] career and [her] life,” and so she went to Arizona State University to study for it. Her commitment and hard work paid off, as within her first year at ASU, she landed a role in the first National Tour of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical “Spring Awakening.”
Going from “Spring Awakening” and “American Idiot,” rock based musicals, to EVITA, a classical musical, Alabado says the biggest difference has been having a 16-piece orchestra on stage, as opposed to a rock band. Despite the difference in genre, Alabado says playing in EVITA has been very exciting, and a true honor and privilege because she, along with the rest of the cast, gets “to tell this story, which is a beautiful piece about the Latin culture and about the life of [Evita] to thousands of thousands of people around the country.”
Alabado, who finds it “so rewarding to step on [a] stage and do what [she] love[s] every night, something many people don’t get to do,” and who “[works] very hard every day to continue having [her] career grow, [feels] like [she] [hasn’t] really made many sacrifices, [as] everything [she] [does] is for the betterment of [herself], [her] career, and [her] life.”
While Alabado does not feel she has made any sacrifices to be the musical theatre actress she is today, she does feel she could not be where she is today without her family. Alabado, who gets emotional when speaking of her family, whom she regards as her inspiration, says she feels so happy and blessed to have such a supportive family, and boyfriend, especially in this difficult business.
Alabado notes this business is difficult, but would like for people who want to enter this business to know:
“ You are good enough, and you are special in your own way, and it’s about showing that you’re different even though everyone is doing the same audition, singing the same song, trying to get the same part, its all about how YOU do it, because you are the only you, there’s no body like YOU, and being different is good. [You also have to work] hard, you [just] cant wait for it to come to you, you have to go get it, you have to go seek for it, you have to work for it, it’s hard, but you get thick skin from it, and its an exciting career, because although there’s a lot of rejection, it’s all about the chase.”
Don’t be surprised if you see Alabado, who shot some commercials for MTV, on television and film, as it is a dream of hers to be on television and film. She made it very clear though, that she would never completely leave musical theatre and Broadway, as it’s where she started and it’s where her passion is, and would never want to let that go.