Children's magician The Electrifying Ernesto is at least in part to thank for inspiring Cricket Calladine's insatiable thirst for attention; if the amateur party illusionist had never picked the pigtailed six year old to be his assistant for his final trick at the East Hartford Fall Festival, she might never have abandoned her then-dream of being a vetrenarian in favor of a life on the stage. It started with an insistance that she, too, would become a magician, with a Christmas list consisting entirely of toy store magic packs and trick cards and long focused hours in her bedroom watching VHS tapes of the greats walking students step by step through all of the basics. It seemed a relatively harmless hobby to her parents, both busy white collar workers who were just glad to have finally found something that would keep their eldest daughter still for more than a few minutes at a time - plus, it came with the added benefit of extra entertainment for their younger children as well, as she proved to be fairly good at it. By the time she reached high school, The Spectacular Cricket had become a small local sensation, taking over the Fall Festival gig when Ernesto retired from magic and working birthday parties on the weekends. Fortunately, by then she had also picked up some interests beyond forcing slights of hand on her friends in the hallways between classes (although she continued to do that for anyone who would watch); a spot on the cheerleading squad lent some balance to her dorkier hobbies, and her practiced charisma made her a great addition to the theatre department, where she fell in love with musicals. As a senior, she announced her decision to attend California Institute of the Arts, thinking that she could get some training, crash some open calls, play some dead hookers on crime procedurals, build up her resume, and see how things panned out from there. If nothing else, she'd have the sun, the beach, plenty of opportunities to get a tan - certainly nothing to complain about.

As it turned out, things ended up rolling a lot faster than she had anticipated. Her performance in a Los Angeles premiere of a new musical, Bare, a Pop Opera, her sophomore year was enough to pique the interest of local professionals, but it was a move back to the east coast that ended up being enough to convince her to put her education on hold, as she moved with the transfer cast of Reefer Madness from California to Off-Broadway. The show ended up closing after less than a month, but Cricket was able to continue her career by taking part in a national tour of Rent, then taking an understudy gig in Broadway's second attempt at a revival of Little Shop of Horrors for the opportunity to make her debut as Audrey, one of her dream roles. She was asked to return for Bare's own Off-Broadway transfer, which was beginning to reach cult status of its own, and then again for Reefer Madness' TV movie adaptation - a chance she jumped at the opportunity for. She worked consistently but mostly under the radar, a reliable comedic actress for short-lived Off-Broadway shows and workshops in their pre-Broadway stages and a fun addition at concerts, but was typically recognized only by the most dedicated of theatre fans. Even her return to Broadway, which came in the form of Lysistrata Jones, a project she had worked with from its beginning stages in Texas, closed after only 34 previews and 30 performances, despite rave reviews from critics. It would have been easy to feel down about yet another project that had flopped before realizing its full potential, but Cricket remained optimistic, finding that the joy that came with speaking to someone who remembered her from one of her past shows or showed up to 54 Below just to hear her sing one song in a two hour show felt almost more special than she imagined any amount of stardom or acclaim could. To say she wasn't in it for the potential acclaim would be a lie - no theatre actress didn't want a Tony, everyone wanted a Tony - but she just wanted to have as much fun as possible until playing dead hookers were the only thing left for her to fall back on.

It seems as though she still has some life in her before that time comes; Cricket continues to work and enjoy her work, having been given opportunities to tackle some of her favorite roles, revisit old ones in concert form, and even originate a few new ones Off-Broadway. Her participation in the 2013 revival of The Last Five Years increased her notability and twitter followers exponentially, and she's since become a more frequent and in-demand fixture at cabaret concerts and in the recording studio for emerging composers, but she's still yet to find a project that truly puts her on the map with the big names - which doesn't exactly bother her, but after more than a decade on the circuit, does sometimes have her wondering if maybe she left behind something important on the west coast after all.