Alyse Hokamp

I’m getting ready to make my debut on the musical theatre stage (Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!) at the end of summer with Theatre Denton.

Just to clarify- not in the pit, but on the stage- singing, acting, and dancing.

I’ll be Ellen, one of the “girls.” I’ve got 4 lines (about 20 words) in the show, and one solo singing line (8 bars). We haven’t learned choreography yet, but I imagine I’ll be dancing quite a bit, since I am one of the more experienced dancers.

Maybe it’s a bit surprising, but I’ve never been in a musical before. I have been in a lot ballets, concerts, and other types of performances, but musical theatre wasn’t something I had much access to growing up. I’d seen a few musical movies and listened to some soundtracks, but I don’t remember seeing a live musical until college. Then, the production I saw was a professional touring Broadway show, which was awesome, but not something I thought I would ever be a part of.

Here in Texas (where schools are relatively huge and fancy), theatre is a whole thing, and I’ve now met many adults from here that were a part of their school theatre programs. In Hawai’i, where I grew up, I don’t think many public schools offer theatre- mine certainly didn’t. It’s likely that the lively community theatre culture here is a result of said of theatre programs.

A quick overview of performance experience from my youth:

Age 4.5- started ballet
Age 5- first ballet performance
Age ~8- started gymnastics, competed a little
Age ~10- stopped gymnastics because practice conflicted with ballet and I had to choose one
Ages 5-14- performing 3 ballet productions a year
Age 11- started flute, first flute performance
Age 13- started youth symphony, began to focus on music activities
Age 16- went to Interlochen Arts Camp (summer camp), started piano
Age 17- headed to college to pursue flute performance

By the end of high school, I wasn’t dancing much- my activities increasingly focused on music. I had a lot of experiential musical understanding from years of listening to classical music in ballet class, but my formal musical training began relatively late, so I had a lot to learn.

Fast forward through music school and many, many orchestra auditions, where I fully identified as a “classical flutist,” and did all the things I was supposed to do (with limited success). 

In 2022, I started the Pan-Tones, which gave me a creative stage for performance. I could do what I wanted to do: play music I chose in spaces we chose.

In 2024, I began to notice that a lot of the music had dance influences, and added choreography into Pan-Tones shows. I received a lot of positive feedback on my dancing, and had a lot of fun doing it. Most people that knew me as a musician had no idea that I danced.

Around the same time, my son won tickets for our family to see Cinderella at our local theatre- it was my first time going to a Theatre Denton production. I had also started vocal lessons a few months prior, so as I watched the female lead singing and dancing on stage, for the first time, I thought “I could do that.”

Now, in 2026, after my third audition, I’ve made my way to that very stage!

It’s interesting. In some ways I’m much less experienced than others in the cast- I’ve never been in a musical, and have only trained my voice for about two years.

On the other hand, I perform very regularly as a singer and instrumentalist, and have resumed regular dance classes (usually 2-4x a week) for several years- since we moved back to Texas in 2021.  So in other ways, I’m much more highly trained and experienced than others in the cast.

It’s a situation where I get to repurpose my skill set in a new and very fun context. Interestingly, the musical theatre crowd does not overlap much with the local music scene here in Denton, so we’ve joined a completely new, but adjacent community by participating in theatre.