Ivy Jensen stars in "Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella" at the Spotlight Theatre -- December 5 through 14.
After years of struggle, Ivy Jensen is living her dream, on stage and off.
From December 5 through 14 at Moline's Spotlight Theatre (1800 Seventh Avenue), the immensely talented 25-year-old Davenport native is starring Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella, an adaptation of the iconic fairy tale with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II.
Cinderella director Sarah Greim cast Jensen in the title role after working with her as a lead in the theatre's June production of Bring It On: The Musical, noting that she loves the performer's work ethic.
“Ivy brought that innocence and genuineness to the role [of Cinderella] that I was looking for,” Greim said recently. “She didn't come in as the Disney version, and read the role like the true revolutionary that Ella is in this show. She obviously had the vocals to support her acting skills, too.
“This show is going to be a feast for the senses,” Greim said of Cinderella, which premiered on CBS-TV in 1957 and starred Julie Andrews. “The cast is full of some familiar faces but also a lot of new faces to the Spotlight stage, which I am super-excited about. Sara Wegener has pushed our building team and designed a phenomenal set with lots of surprises and Ted Brown has built a carriage fit for a princess. Heather Blair and her costume team have also brought their A-plus game, and the show will be all the sparkly magic that Cinderella should be.”
Cinderella is the only Rodgers & Hammerstein musical written for TV, and was originally viewed by more than 100 million people. The musical has consequently been adapted for the stage many times, and its first Broadway production was a 2013 adaptation that starred Laura Osnes and Santino Fontana, and that boasted a new book by Douglas Carter Beane, and is the version the Spotlight will stage.
Jensen auditioned for Cinderella in August, as she was recovering from a breakup, a rocky childhood, and severe struggles with mental health. “I was in survival mode,” Jensen said recently.
The night before auditions, Jensen and her mom were watching musicals at home, including the 2021 Cinderella movie starring Camila Cabello.
“It was so awesome,” Jensen said. “I hadn’t seen that movie before, and growing up, I got a lot of pushback from people for trying to do white things, like white roles. I was told even by my ex-boyfriend that Disney princesses need to be their original color. And he wasn't the only person to tell me this. I couldn't see it until I saw (the 2021 version). And I was like, 'Wait, no … . I can do that.'”
Jensen was thrilled to be asked for Cinderella callbacks, particularly when she heard her eventual Prince Topher (Charles Murphy) sing.
“I remember sitting there just swimming in his voice,” she recalled. “I didn't really know this guy, right? But I knew that he was super-good.”
Jensen said that when Greim offered her the role, “My heart stopped. I immediately just started sobbing. I was just so happy and shocked at the same time. It was kind of a similar feeling with Bring It On’where it was like, I'm surprised, but I'm not surprised, because God is telling me that things are gonna work out.”
It made sense to make Cinderella's Ella a woman of color, given that color-blind casting has become more common in the industry, as in the new movie versions of The Little Mermaid and Snow White. “It’s the biggest gift ever,” Jensen said, and the performer may have met her prince in real life, as she and Murphy are currently dating.
“Charles is my person,” Jensen said. “That's my man. It’s honestly like a dream come true.”
Living and Loving Music from Family
Jensen grew up in DeWitt, and played and sang with her family at DeWitt Evangelical Free Church. Her parents are both musical (her dad also writes songs), and Jensen plays piano, bass, viola, guitar, and drums.
She has two younger brothers and a younger sister, who are also musical. Jensen's first theatre role was in 6th grade in Meet Me in St. Louis at the DeWitt Performing Arts Center, and her first community-theatre experience was in DeWitt, in On the Edge Productions' Midsummer Night's Dream in Jersey in 2016. The next year, the first year she was also in Iowa All-State Choir, she was in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, in which she had a solo in “Brotherhood of Man."
In 2018, Jensen graduated from Eldridge's North Scott High School, where she was in jazz choir, chamber singers, speech, orchestra, and theatre, making All-State Choir two times. Her first musical at North Scott was in The Little Mermaid during her junior year. She was then a narrator (among three) in Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for her senior year, and earned a theatre scholarship at Luther College (Decorah, Iowa) for the fall of 2018. That summer, Jensen was also one of the three urchins in Little Shop of Horrors for On the Edge.
But during her first semester at Luther, Jensen, who says she battled inner demons for 10 years and was bullied at North Scott, attempted suicide.
“I was severely depressed and anxious," she said. "I dealt with body dysmorphia, eating disorders -- just a lot. I never got treated or anything. I just went to the school counselor and my church. People didn’t get the full picture. They didn't really understand me. And also just being a brown person in this area, they're still a little behind.”
After a relationship during her first fall at Luther included verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse, Jensen attempted suicide, was hospitalized, put on medication, and took a leave from school until the fall of 2019. It was then that she wrote her first poetry and songs, which helped her process her emotions and heal.
“It was just spilling out,” Jensen said. “My Google Drive is full, just page after page after page. I just write everything that came to mind.”
She returned to Luther in 2019 and was in the ensemble for the musical Chicago. She didn’t start recording her own songs until 2022.
Earlier in 2019, Jensen performed in two shows at Moline's Playcrafters Barn Theatre: Avenue Q and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf. In the latter, one line really struck her: “I was searching for God and found myself.”
After returning to Luther, she performed in the college choir, jazz choir, and string quartet, but dropped out for good after COVID shutdowns in spring 2020, later taking music production classes online through Full Sail University.
Working at Starbucks and babysitting, Jensen (who also had bipolar disorder) was prolific during the pandemic.
“I just started healing myself, started focusing on having a better, more intentional life,” she said. “And that's when songwriting became, like, 'Look, girl, you have this stuff. It's been healing you, and you share it.' And so then I spent that time putting stuff together.” Jensen consequently collaborated with friends and recorded in one of their home studios in a garage.
Moving to Cleveland
After meeting a man who she began dating and seeking a fresh start, Jensen moved to Cleveland in January of 2023 to pursue performing. Jensen said that her boyfriend, who eventually moved to Texas for pilot training, turned out to be another narcissistic abusive relationship.
“I wanted to go to school for music production, wanted to start the fall of 2022, but I knew there was no way that I could do that by myself in that situation,” she said. “So I had to wait. I didn't go to school until summer of 2024.”
In Cleveland, Jensen worked at an Amazon fulfillment center and at a marketing firm as a recruiter, and in the summer of 2023, she saw an ad for the Downtown Cleveland Alliance. She was accepted in its busking program, in which performers are hired to perform outside at a specific time and location. Jensen sang with karaoke tracks, and livestreamed for more tips, three to five times a week.
She got hired to sing with the Chozen Few Band, which played many weddings and toured regionally. Jensen helped overhaul the whole band image and marketing. A Cleveland highlight came in July of 2024, when Jensen was nominated for Best Female Vocalist for the Cleveland Music Awards, and dressed up for its red-carpet event that August.
But she broke her back while working at Amazon at the beginning of September, saying “I could barely move, could barely walk for like three months.” Her car also got repossessed, and she traveled back home to the QC in October of 2024 after starting an online music production program with Full Sail University. They sent a launch box with full equipment for her home studio to her parents’ Davenport house.
Her first show back in the QC was this past June, as the lead Danielle in Bring It On at the Spotlight Theatre. Jensen's mother, Violeta, has been involved in Spotlight shows since the venue opened in 2018.
Using the Arts to Heal
Now Jensen says she is off medication and healing through the therapeutic power of music, writing, and performing.
“Medications really messed with my hormones," she recalled. "It messed with my metabolism. I need to figure out how to do this and not contribute to my pulling myself down. What I’ve been focused on that has really helped me is subconscious and cellular healing with sound vibration and subliminal reprogramming, meditation. Really just tapping into the root of my beliefs and especially about myself.
“I have had a lot of really hard, difficult, challenging things happen in my life and a lot of trauma. But I believe in transmutation. You can take whatever is given to you and you can turn it into something better. You put the intention into your life, the energy that you have and your body and what you do.”
Community theatre and the bonds formed in “Cinderella” have helped.
“It's almost like hope is at the center of everything. I feel like the message of the show is coming through so strong, and it's bringing everyone together,” Jensen said. “Life can change and things will get better. You will be provided for. You do have people. You don't have to just fight for yourself. You can have support. You can have a community.”
“One thing I really love about this Rodgers and Hammerstein version is, in order for Cinderella to receive her dream, she has to do a couple things. One of those things is she has to believe that what she desires, she can actually have,” she said. “Even though she's in an abusive environment, even though, like, all she's known is pain and trauma and dissociation.”
She relates to Ella finding her dream, after enduring bullying and abuse.
“In order for her to get what she wants, she has to stand up for herself, she has to voice her truth and be vulnerable,” Jensen said. “She also has to advocate for the people that she cares about and encourage others to be the best versions of themselves and to always choose love, even in the face of persecution.”
“It really is magic and it's my life and it's this show,” Jensen said. “I really love the concept of your dreams can come true. You can have what you desire.
“I just want to keep being around music and theatre," she said. "I can't work a normal job. It's never working out for me. I need to stay in the arts. And even if I have to do the work myself for my own business, I know how to do that from the ground up, so I'm not too worried about it."
In addition to her family support, Jensen says her most significant mentors are Spotlight owners Sara and Brent Tubbs.
"I study how they organize things," Jensen said, "like three rehearsals going on at once. It's crazy. Their coordination is insane as they're going from one show into the next. And the way that Brent's mind works in particular when it comes to marketing and his ideas. Everyone on the team and their staff, how they implement their ideas ... . It's so amazing. They inspire me like crazy, and I just really admire that they came out here, they took a chance starting a new thing in a new community, and they have hosted a space where people who are different can come in.
“And I don't feel like I need to change myself," Jensen said. "I can just be myself. That was something that I was dreaming of my whole childhood.”
Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella runs at the Spotlight Theatre December 5 through 14, admission is $22-27, and more information and tickets are available by calling (309)912-7647 and visiting TheSpotlightTheatreQC.com. You can check out’s Jensen’s original music and other work at linktr.ee/ivymusichome.
