By Ashley M. Casey
Staff Writer
“What do you do?”
It’s a common icebreaker question, but for Sarah Blewett, the answer is not so simple.
“What you do, what makes you happy and how you make money are three totally different questions,” said Blewett, a 2009 graduate of Baker High School.
Blewett, who now lives in Tonawanda, works for GEICO by day, records music in her home studio and performs in musical theater productions in the Buffalo area. Last weekend, she performed the role of Papagena in Buffalo Opera Unlimited’s abridged, English-language production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” at Buffalo State College. It was her second role with BSO; she made her debut with the opera company as a geisha in “Madama Butterfly” in September.
Sarah Blewett’s foray into opera started as a joke.
“When I was in college I went for musical theater. With my friends, I did all of these silly vocal flutters,” she said, “and I realized when it came out of me, it actually sounded legit.”
While at the University of Buffalo, Blewett tried out for “The Threepenny Opera” and landed the role of Penny Peachum. After college, she has continued pursuing her dream of singing on the stage.
Blewett’s musical theater career began in her elementary school days in B’ville. Her first role was as a Lost Boy in “Peter Pan.” From then on, she was hooked.
“It was sixth grade when I knew that I wanted to keep it in my life forever,” she said.
Blewett capped her high school musical theater career as Belle in “Beauty and the Beast,” which featured another now-famous B’ville performer: Julia Goodwin.
“She was my Chip!” Blewett recalled. “She’s gone on to do great things, too.”
In 2013, Goodwin won Michael Feinstein’s Great American Songbook High School Vocal Competition. The next year, she was a contestant on television’s “America’s Got Talent.”
“There’s something in the water there,” Blewett said of her hometown. “It’s cool to look back and see what B’ville has created.”
Many of Blewett’s friends have tried their luck in the New York City acting scene, but she decided to stay in Buffalo and follow a different path.
“Some people put [New York] on a pedestal. Some people think they only way to make it is to go down to the city,” she said. “When I was in high school, I thought that was the only option.”
One’s pursuit of the arts does not have to be all-consuming to “make your heart happy,” Blewett said.
“A lot of the times we get held back by what people say about the arts, that you have to have a backup plan, that it’s not going to pay you enough money,” she said. “If it makes your heart happy, then you should continue to pursue it in a way that makes you happy.”
Blewett finds balance among her day job, recording her own songs and participating in the local musical theater scene.
“I audition for shows a couple times a year,” she said. “If I get a show, I’m happy to do it; if I don’t, then I can focus on other things in my life.”
While she’s not a full-time singer/actress, Blewett’s love of the arts bleeds into every aspect of her life.
“Even people at my job will attest that I’m singing all the time,” she said.
Her experience onstage has even helped her working in insurance.
“I make people’s day when they’ve been in a bad situation, sometimes they’ve been in an accident. … I can know people at a deeper level when I come into contact with them, even if it’s over the phone,” Blewett said. “It’s all tied together: being in the arts and being a good human.”
