Since this season's Carousel Music Theater cast arrived on June 16, they've been memorizing songs and learning how to serve — cabaret style.

On June 17, Carousel owner Robb Barnard handed Zack Heidorn, Maria Norris, Emily Nelkin, Amber Dewey and Ricky Marchese their scripts, and the music and lyrics for 35 to 40 songs to learn by June 23. There are approximately 15 to 20 tunes in the current show, “Bye, Bye Love,” and 20 songs sung by the cast as waiters and waitresses for the Carousel's audiences.

During the cabaret dinner hour, each performer sings three solos, two duets with four to five group numbers.

“Ultimately, we had one week to put on a show and learn cabaret,” Heidorn said.

The cast said Barnard gave each of them the OK to choose two songs for the cabaret that they already knew to ease into their dual roles as waiter and performer.

“I guess I was nervous to put up the show, and wondered how I was going to give people the right food while I was listening for my lines,” Marchese said. “The more I did it, it got better. I just had to do it, there wasn't really anything I could do to prepare.”

Marchese is the only cast member who hadn't waited on tables before, but even for those who had, it took some getting used to.

Norris, who had waited tables at a dinner theater in her native state of Massachusetts noted the system at Carousel was “unique to the venue.” She and the others all agreed there were a lot of new things to keep in mind beyond carrying trays or plates of food.

“It's a different thing carrying trays of soups to a table knowing in a minute you have to start singing your heart out,” Dewey said.

Heidorn gave kudos to casts who had come before.

“It's obvious they did a good job of making things memorable for the clientèle. They all know how things go and that makes it so much easier, people are a lot more forgiving when they know you may have to do a song while you're waiting on them.”

Deciding which songs will be sung on any given evening during the cabarets is the job of Bethany Aiken, musical director and pianist. Aiken was with the cast for the first three weeks, filling in for the director that was hired, who backed out at the last minute.

“Fortunately, Beth had been our musical director two seasons ago and was available to take the position on until our new director arrives from Ohio,” Barnard said.

In addition to learning the songs for cabaret and the show, the cast has to learn their lines and flesh out their characters.

“The first week at the cast house we were in a circle reading the script, memorizing, testing each other,” Norris said. “It was a great way to bond.”

Being together pretty much 24/7, a Carousel cast learns about each other fairly quickly. For example, all three of the young women began performing by age 7, and shared some humorous accounts of why.

As a five-year-old, Dewey was already making up her own shows, which starred her parents. However, the tiny tot was almost as exacting as Stanley Kubrick when it came to how she wanted mom and dad to do their roles. So, they got their daughter involved in community theater.

“Disney baby” Nelkin sang songs from her favorite Disney features all-of-the-time. By the age of five, she says her parents decided to get her involved in a local theater group to cut down on singing at home and onto the stage to expand her audience.

Heidorn wasn't bitten by the theater bug till age 13, acting in school productions. As he grew older, he found theater to be a way to explore what makes people tick.

“I love trying to figure out different archetypes of people and what happens when they interact with each other,” Heidorn said.

Norris was also five when she began performing with a local group, Triboro Youth Theater, the only art in her community at the time.

“All of my friends came from there and everything I'm now interested in stemmed from that theater group,” Norris said. “I felt I grew up there more than my house.”

Marchese's first role took him from the soccer field to Narnia — and that was quite a trip.

“I decided there were more girls in theater than on the soccer field,” Marchese said. “I was always a performer, then I started realizing the effect of it on an audience, and also theater has a really good sense of community. I always say it's a great thing for kids to do and has a positive influence on people's lives.”

At this point in their young careers, having benefited from being involved in theater most all of their lives, they see summer stock at Carousel as a real boon for their developing craft.

Norris noted that although she has done a run of shows before, at Carousel, the shows are six nights a week. That schedule requires much more stamina and energy from the singer/actors.

Heidorn said they had all talked about the benefits of the amount of performing they are doing this summer.

“We are going to learn so much about our voices and about the placement of our voices. If you have an audience of 12 and another of 90, that placement changes,” Heidorn said. “Maybe the roles you thought you could play, you discover you can't, or maybe you could, but not six-seven nights a week. We are learning so much about our voices and who we are as performers.”

Find out more about the cast at www.carouselmusictheater.org.

See them in action in the current production of “Bye, Bye Love,” through July 20.

The new show (a very fractured fairy tale), “Once Upon A Time,” written just for this cast by Barnard and Mary Miller, opens on July 22. Call 207-633-5297 for show/dinner reservations.

The Carousel Music Theater is located at 196 Townsend Avenue in Boothbay Harbor, where the doors open at 6:30 p.m.