Broadway will be coming to Eastern when five Broadway veterans will perform famous songs for one night in Neil Berg’s 100 Years of Broadway show Saturday.

The audience can expect to hear songs from Broadway favorites such as “Chicago,” “Phantom of the Opera,” “Jersey Boys,” “Grease,” “My Fair Lady,” “Guys and Dolls,” “Rent,” “The Wizard of Oz” and many others.

“You really get a feel for a small concert scale, instead of a theater scale what it’s like to experience Broadway, and you get to do it not just from one show but a collection of songs from all kinds of shows,” said Director of Doudna Dwight Vaught.

Along with the long list of Broadway songs, Neil Berg’s 100 Years of Broadway will bring an all star cast to match: Carter Calvert, Robert Dusold, Ted Louis Levy, Rita Harvey and Grant Norman.

Starting Sept. 1, Eastern students and residents were encouraged to upload a video for “Singing with the Broadway Stars” to YouTube, Myspace or Facebook, showcasing their best singing performances.

The videos could be up to two minutes long and was open to anyone age 13 and up.

The majority of the people who sent in tapes were Eastern students of all different majors who did not have professional training.

About 18 people from around the area sent in audition tapes, but there could only be one winner.

The winner of “Singing with the Broadway Stars” is Meg Borah, a freshmen family and consumer sciences major.

Borah put together a 50 second video on YouTube with clips from her recent performance as Belle in “Beauty and the Beast.”

Being the winner means Borah will have the opportunity to sing a solo verse in the closing song, “Seasons of Love” from Rent during Neil Berg’s 100 Years of Broadway show.

Borah entered the contest with encouragement from her voice lesson teacher and her parents.

“I have been ecstatic ever since I found out. I am very excited to be part of it,” Borah said.

Borah is no stranger to the theater, along with playing Belle in “Beauty and the Beast,” she has also been in many productions in high school.

In addition to Borah being chosen as the winner of the contest, seven runners up were also chosen. These seven winners will be allowed to sing in the chorus for the show.

Neil Berg’s 100 Years of Broadway is one of the bigger shows Doudna has put on and is starting up all kinds of buzz.

“We’re really pretty juiced about this show,” Vaught said. “Among the many great shows we are trying to do this is one of those that appeals to such a broad base from young people who maybe have never had a chance to see a true Broadway show to folks who have seen shows on Broadway, to musicals from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ all the way up to ‘Chicago’ and ‘Rent’ and really contemporary kinds of things. It really covers something for everybody.”

Tickets for the show are $20 and can be purchased at the Doudna box office.

The concert will take place 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the Dvorak Concert Hall of the Doudna Fine Arts Center.

Samantha Bilharz can be reached at 581-7942

or slbilharz@eiu.edu.

Victoria Bacigalupo a sophomore early childhood education major sells breast cancer awareness T-shirts for Colleges Against Cancer Thursday in the Library Quad. (Danny Damiani

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