Carter Santos: A Showman of South Kingstown
The orchestra starts picking up the tempo as colorful lights flash over the stage as the performers begin an exciting stunt of choreography. The performers look over the crowd and hope that the audience is feeling the energy in the room. And there is one man that can make a crowd erupt from slouching in their chairs to a standing ovation. “Give us something!” Carter Santos yells to the crowd as he performs a flying leap over the leading man, Henry O’Brien. Santos’ energy ignites the crowd as the other performers do their own stunts. As the show moves onward, Santos’s showmanship commands the stage and the rest of the cast follows suit leading to one of the most successful performances in South Kingstown High School’s history.
My earliest memory of Santos was at a youth soccer game. There was a pause in the game for a moment as the referee was setting up for a corner kick. The player was about to strike the ball when out of the blue I heard a young boy shout: “Oh my god! Look at those geese!” I looked over and sure enough, a young Santos was staring and pointing at a flock of geese flying overhead.
Santos stuck with soccer throughout middle school and high school, and perhaps his biggest athletic achievement arrived when the SKHS varsity men’s soccer team won the state championship in the fall of his senior year. Santos said he has always loved soccer and while he said he does not want to compete at the top level in college, the SKHS senior said he would still love to keep playing on a club team or group to further pursue music and theater.
“Last year was arguably one of the toughest years of my life,” Santos explained. “I was balancing auditions, balancing varsity, balancing staying in shape, balancing friendships… I’m not doing that in college.”
Some of Santos’s fondest memories of music were at Wakefield Elementary School in downtown Wakefield. He remembers singing and dancing with Ms. Collins and Mr. Colombino in his early music classes. He later remarked, “I always liked singing; I always liked dancing, having attention.”
While many young children enjoy being the center of attention, few embraced it as much as Santos. One of his earliest performances was a rendition of High School Musical Jr at a Theater by the Sea camp. In his role as Chad, Santos said it was easier to get on stage because he rarely got nervous as a kid. He talked about how nerves were natural for him in his later shows. In a production of Gypsy at the Contemporary Theater Company, “Nerves helped,” he said. “I’m playing a teenager, I am a teenager. Go on-stage and dance and sing.”
While at South Kingstown High School Santos was driven to make a name for himself. He involved himself in band, choir, theater, and eSKape, an audition-only choir group, not to mention his time playing junior varsity and varsity soccer.
One of his more memorable theater productions was his sophomore year musical The Addams Family where Santos played Lurch, the mostly-mute somber butler. The soon-to-be graduating senior reflected on his role and how hard it was for him to keep a straight face while every other character was cracking jokes around him. “There’s bloopers even a week before the show of just Henry [O’Brien] or Mike [Joyce] saying something funny, by accident, in character, and I start laughing,” Santos recollected.
While it was hard just to keep a straight face, Santos also said it was hard for him to watch all of his friends singing and dancing while his role was just to stand there and play dead. “Not singing for the whole show until the end… At first I was like ‘Oh this stinks’ and then I realized ‘This is my character. I’m not gonna throw a fit.’”
The Addams Family was also his first high school production that was directed by Mr. Ryan Muir, the new choir director and a favorite teacher among many SKHS students. Muir himself has a very broad musical background and formerly toured with his band Monty Are I before pursuing a career in education. Santos later attended a reunion concert of Mr. Muir’s band where the student was shocked when his teacher dove off the stage into a crowd of fans. Santos even recalls looking over to his friend and thinking, “Oh my god! We’re carrying our teacher.”
Santos believes he truly arrived as an actor during his junior year with the production of Newsies, a Broadway show about the newspaper strike of the late nineteenth century. Fittingly, he played the role of Davey Jacobs, a young and powerful leader of the newspaper strike. Santos said that this was probably his favorite show he has ever done. “I was able to be myself, regardless of the role. Just all of the dancing and all of the singing.”
Santos believes so much goes into the process of preparing a show, especially its scale and what each rehearsal entails. The SKHS senior discussed how elaborate some rehearsals were with students learning dances while others practiced their lines and the orchestra practiced their parts. Closer to show time, dress rehearsal started and Santos distinctly remembered the joy of getting his costume: “That’s always great, getting your costume,” he remarked. “Oh my god! I-I miss that. I genuinely miss that. Having everyone in the room; everyone getting along.”
Santos’s final year at South Kingstown High School took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the soccer and theater standout still found a way to make the best of it. To cap off his soccer state championship , Santos recently was awarded the title of “Mr. SKHS” in the school’s variety show, and also played a lead role in the theater department’s successful virtual production of A Killer Party.
The murder mystery was written in 2020 as Broadway’s first ever digital musical. Filmed in the same style as a sitcom, the performers used multiple camera angles in their own homes to record their parts. The performers then sent in their parts to Mr. Muir, who spent countless hours editing video and audio files into a finished musical. In his role as the aptly named George Murderer, Santos’ performance shined through with his witty remarks and impeccable showmanship. While I cannot imagine what great things Santos would have done if it had not been for the pandemic, he found a way to take a poor year and make the best of it.
Next year, Santos will be attending the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City where he plans to pursue music, theater, and film. The college has seen many standout musicians throughout its time including Anthony Ramos, Jason Mraz, and Jason Derulo. Santos’ musical skills and virtuous charisma will take him farther than we can imagine. Anyone that has seen him perform can attest to his unparalleled passion for music and theater. While “theater kids” often get made fun of, Santos ignored any kind of derision and focused on what he was passionate about. His love for music and theater is what keeps him going. He concluded, “There are pictures I have where I’m just smiling and it’s an actual smile.”
