Emmy Award-winner, Tony and Grammy nominee Liz Callaway will return to Fayetteville Nov. 8 and 9 with a cabaret performance “Broadway & Beyond.”

The limited engagement will include some her most well known tunes, including her Tony-nominated turn in “Baby,” her long-run belting “Memory” in “Cats,” alongside songs from her recording career and the silver screen — including her Oscar-nominated hit from “Anastasia,” according to TheatreSquared’s website.

By phone, Callaway said never wanted to be a star, she just wanted work as a singer.

“I always had a certain confidence in myself,” she said. “I never thought about trappings of success, but deep down, even as a little girl, I knew I had a gift.”

Callaway became well known to a certain generation as the voice of animated film characters, most of all as the singing voice of Anastasia, but also as Odette in “Swan Princess,” Jasmine in the Aladdin sequels and adult Kiara in “The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride,” and a dancing napkin ring in “Beauty and the Beast.”

But the iconic singer also worked at length with Stephen Sondheim, which gave her a Broadway debut through “Merrily We Roll Along.” She was also cast as Ellen in the Broadway production of “Miss Saigon.”

Her first experience with TheatreSquared was about eight years ago, when she did a performance for T2’s gala.

“I’m excited to come back to Fayetteville, I love it,” Callaway said. That night she had sung three songs and then encountered some technical difficulties, causing her to think on her feet and change things mid-performance.

When TheatreSquared management saw how comfortable she was improvising and handling a challenge with grace, it deepened their collaboration. Director Bob Ford invited her back to be a part of the one person play “Every Brilliant Thing,” in early 2019.

“We’ve been talking for years about doing some concerts here,” Callaway said, noting it has finally come to fruition. For the upcoming event, she said the beautiful theatre will be turned into a cabaret space.

“The show I do ‘Broadway and Beyond’ is a retrospective of my career,” she said. “It has songs from the albums I’ve done, chunks of Sondheim, because he’s important to me; songs from ‘Anastasia,’ ‘Baby’ and ‘Cats,’ which I did for five years.”

Audiences can expect to hear Callaway’s personal stories, too, because she loves to connect with the audience.

“When I do a concert, I tell a lot of stories,” she said. “I always want audiences, at the end of a night of music, to feel like they had dinner with me.”

FINDING HER VOICE

Liz Callaway fall in love with music in part because she grew up in a musical household. Her mother was a singer and a voice teacher and her sister Ann is a singer too. Her dad, TV journalist John Callaway, had a big love for music himself.

“I was born into it,” she said. “I was very shy growing up and knew I could sing, I loved to sing. But I usually did it when nobody was home.”

Young Liz Callaway grew up listening to Pamela Myers, especially the “Company” album; Marilyn McCoo, Barbra Streisand and Carole King.

“There’s something authentic about all those singers and just a simplicity and something pure about their singing,” she said. “It was very unique and was what I always wanted to do.”

Though she admired those greats, Callaway said she learned early on that she and her voice are not like anyone else’s. That’s an advantage, she said, and something she now tells her students: No one can sing like you can.

Still, it wasn’t until high school that she began doing chorus for a show in Winnetka, Ill. Her parents had just gotten divorced, and when the most popular girl in the theater department asked if she was OK and did she want to hang out with her and her friends, Liz said ‘Sure.’

“I didn’t have a lot of friends and they sort of rescued me,” she said. “It was an epiphany, that if I do theater, I can have friends like this, an amazing community.”

So at first, Callaway performed for the social aspect of theater and thought she had better get over this fear of singing in front people, but it wasn’t easy.

“It was terrifying, but it helped to play a role,” she said. “You’re not you, you can lose yourself in a role. The times I sang as myself, as Liz, I found that very challenging.”

Callaway faced the music and auditioned for college. She went to the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music for a quarter, then moved on to New York with her sister.

Callaway would go on to meet many other singers who struggle with nerves and says she still sometimes struggles, but relies on her motto: “Nothing to prove, only to share.”

“That helps, but not always,” she said, though it’s a feeling that comes on at the beginning of any new thing. “Being a singer and actor is an act of bravery.”

ALWAYS GROWING

Having been in the business for so long now, she’s had the “highest of highs and lowest of lows, that’s part of a career in music,” Callaway said. “There’s not ever been one moment where I went, ‘I’ve made it.’”

Early in her career, she’d get cast in a certain show and people would say “‘Oh you’ve made it now.’ Then the show would close two weeks later, and I would have to look for the next thing.”

Callaway always felt like she was destined to share her music, to do something with it. She said she appreciates how fortunate she’s been to do so many different types of things, when initially she just wanted to do theater. She never thought she’d do an animated movie, concerts and cabaret — that was 100 times scarier, afterall.

Most of what fueled her career was working hard and being in the right place at the right time. If she didn’t get one role, she would be seen at another and get a different job.

Doing the show “Baby” was her first big role on Broadway, when the Broadway community discovered her. Now after all that time, Callaway finds that so many people are familiar with this role despite the show having run for only a very short time, thanks to the Sirius XM Broadway channel, which played a lot from “Baby.”

In the last 10-12 years, Callaway has discovered an entrepreneurial side of herself and produced her last five albums.

“I’ve enjoyed that too, creating something, taking ownership,” she said. Learning, continuing to grow and challenge herself is important to Callaway.

During the covid pandemic, she got active on YouTube, where she made a series of videos of herself singing in her car and uploaded her songs from previous years, too. On the morning of her interview with the Democrat-Gazette, she was going through list of pros and cons on whether she should do TikTok, where so many people use her songs from Anastasia and other animated movies.

But in an effort to reach friends, family and fans, Callaway sends out a newsletter as an extra outlet for creativity, where she shares songs and links, like her own little magazine. It’s been a fun and entertaining endeavor, she said.

To prepare for her performances, Liz Callaway sings — a lot.

“It’s like sports, you have to train,” she said. This “Broadway & Beyond” will be 75-80 minutes long. “It’s really important to keep your voice strong.”

After seeing that Taylor Swift’s preparation includes singing on the treadmill, running for uptempo and slowing down for ballads, Callaway now sings while walking uphill.

“God help me when I pass someone on street,” she said with a laugh. “I do that, hydrate and try to get rest, which is easier said than done. But I love the travel part. I get excited every time.”