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When Broadway veteran Melody Betts isn’t making magic on stage, she’s whipping it up in the kitchen. The star of The Wiz recently advanced to the finals of Colossal’s Favorite Chef competition, hosted in partnership with Carla Hall and benefiting the James Beard Foundation.
“I had zero expectations when it came to this competition. So I’m genuinely taken by surprise that I have made it this far. I had no idea,” she told BroadwayWorld. “I just thought I would give it a real try. When I began to put some real effort into it, people just started showing up for me. The theatre community especially showed up in a way that reminded me of the importance of human connection. It made me cry to see people step up to support. You forget sometimes. You forget that together is how we move the needle, how we get things done.
“Cooking has always been a part of my existence in Theatre. I love feeding people. Ask anybody that I’ve ever worked with, they have probably had some of my cooking. And I love introducing people to soul food, especially those who have never had it before. It’s an experience! To watch people’s response to it. It always tickles me to see their eyes light up and they always ask for seconds!”
If she wins, Melody plans to establish an endowment within the Theatre & Dance department at her alma mater to help provide scholarships for students facing financial hardship.
“After the pandemic, I founded an organization at my alma mater. The Dumela Alumni Theatre Council. The purpose of the organization was to be the support, for the students of color, that I needed when I was a grad student at a PWI university,” she explained. “Over the years, we have supported the department and the students through workshops, scholarships, conflict resolution, auditions, casting and more. However, there have been moments where we have lost some really talented students due to financial hardship. That has actually been the most heartbreaking part of this experience. We just didn’t have enough money to help. And it’s something that stays on my mind constantly. After doing a little digging and speaking with the financial department at the university, I learned about the endowment account and the possibilities of being able to provide scholarships on an annual basis through an account like this. So it has been a goal of the organizations executive board to raise the money for this kind of account for a little while now. When I realized that the prize money was the exact amount that I needed to open this account, it lit even more of a fire underneath me to strive for the finish line.”
Semi-Finalist voting ends on Thursday, July 23rd at 10pm ET.
