Ask anyone who has ever been on a cruise, and they’ll tell you there’s virtually always something happening somewhere on the ship. A large vessel full of thousands of passengers is going to need plenty of entertainment options.

These happenings include big-budget stage performances, many of them versions of Broadway musicals. Such shows provide an avenue for actors wanting to break into the business, as well as a chance to see more of the world. That’s exactly what several Houstonians did, and their high seas adventures have paid dividends in their careers.

Take Gigi Lewis, a graduate of Houston’s Aldine High School. She performed as both Alline Bullock and one of the Ikettes in the national tour of Tina: the Tina Turner Musical, roles she landed as a direct result of her work on Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. Her cousin signed her up for a talent show, to her initial shock.

But she still agreed to participate, with her cousin recording the show and posting it online for a global audience. Royal Caribbean then came to her with an audition opportunity.

She raised money through GoFundMe so she could make it to Miami for her audition. Royal hired her that very day, casting her as Pearl in Hairspray. She performed on the cruise line for about seven years, and was working in Spain when she first learned about auditions for Tina.

In true showbiz fairy tale fashion, she emailed the director, sending him clips of her singing Tina Turner songs and saying she’d love the chance to audition. Twenty-four hours after his response, she jumped on a plane, flew to New York and landed the part of Alline, Turner’s older sister, as well as an Ikette. She also understudied for the Tina Turner role.

Her fellow Houstonian DeQuina Moore, a graduate of the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, already had some Broadway credits to her name when Norwegian Cruise Lines came calling. She’d been in the original cast of the 2007 smash Legally Blonde and a few national tours. Right here in Houston, she played ballerina Lauren Anderson in the world premiere of Plumshuga at Stages, and also held a solo holiday cabaret show there. The opportunity to play Diva Donna in Summer: The Donna Summer Musical was too good to pass up.

Moore had performed in the musical’s national tour before COVID lockdowns. Because the same creative team was handling the contract on Norwegian Cruise Line, Moore was on their radar.

“That role was a blessing,” she says “I loved the part, and I’d played it before, but as the understudy. I was so excited to grow into it and make it my own. I’m so glad I did it.”

She flew to Miami in 2023 for a month of rehearsals before boarding the Norwegian Prima, where she spent eight months on stage as Diva Donna, the iteration of songstress Donna Summer while in her 50s. Moore left the show in March 2024 to hit the road as part of SuperFreak: The Rick James Musical touring cast.

Andrew Scoggin, who notably completed a run in the national tour of Hairspray as dance show host Corny Collins, also got his start working on cruise ships. He grew up in Houston, attending Deerwood Elementary School and Riverwood Middle School before his family relocated to Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

“I was always a band kid,” he says That experience led him to performing in high school, but he didn’t necessarily think that’s where his professional life would take him. “I was going to be an athletic trainer. But I eventually switched majors and got parts in school in Evita and Ragtime.”

Following his graduation from DeSales University, he did some regional theater work before getting cast as both Vince Fontaine and Teen Angel in Grease on Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas. After six months, he booked the national tour of Annie, playing Bert Healy and understudying Rooster. From there, he landed in Hairspray.

“I recorded my audition tape in my room on the ship, and I wanted to stand out,” he recalls. “I was singing the Corny Collins number, and I had someone toss a can of hairspray to me.”

All of the actors agree that performing on a ship is not only an opportunity to hone and grow their craft, it’s also a chance to take in global sights. Moore noted that she explored caves in Iceland and walked in the historic footsteps of Josephine Baker in Paris.

“I loved that I could find ports I wanted to go back to,” she says.

Lewis estimates that she has visited around 30 countries, especially around the Caribbean and the Mediterranean Seas, while Scroggin sailed around Nassau, Jamaica, and St. Barth’s.

Performers on board cruise ships typically handle three or four shows a week, and not always the initial musical they get cast for. Both Scoggin and Lewis took the stage in revue-style shows in Royal Caribbean’s main theater, as well as solo acts in spaces around the ship.

Depending on how a performer’s contract is written and which cruise line they’re working on, they may enjoy different privileges. As a principal in the show, Moore could come and go when the ship was in port. The ensemble players, who were categorized as crew, could not. That bothered her.

“There were two different sets of rules,” she says “The performers who were crew had to do our show and other mainstage performances, like Wheel of Fortune. I didn’t think that was fair, and I had to step up and be a leader to make sure the dynamic of the cast was that we were all one family and we were all deserving to be there.”

For Lewis, who was also a principal player in her shows on Royal Caribbean, being on the ship meant being able to see other performers when she wasn’t onstage herself and learning about her chosen career.

“One of the things I learned is patience and how to work with others,” she says “You’re on this ship with hundreds of other people from all over the world. You realize that not everyone was raised like you. I was just this little Texas girl. It made me see the world through other people’s eyes.”

Performing on a ship can be a challenge. Singers and dancers have to do what they do while the ship is at sea, meaning they might encounter literal bumps along the way. Scoggin described working on a Royal Caribbean production that involved a pirate ship rotating on stage.

“I was fight captain on that show,” he says “And it had compartments that opened for certain scenes, and you’re moving around while the ship is moving — it was wild!”

Shows can and do get canceled if the seas are too rough, so performers need to be flexible. The show must still go on, however. If a planned performance with a lot of choreography or acrobatics gets axed because of choppy weather or other high seas shenanigans, it might get replaced with more of a concert-style performance, for example. And while guests come and go after a week or two, cast members stay on a ship for months at a time. Many use port days to make runs to pharmacies or other stores to stock up on the must-haves that they can’t get on board.

Still, the experience proved valuable. Lewis returned to Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas for three weeks. Scoggin will be back on the Harmony of the Seas, reprising his previous Grease roles in October 2024.

Moore is taking a break as of publication time, following back-to-back bookings between 2023 and 2024. But she knows she’ll be back on stage in the future, and appreciated her time on Norwegian.

"I really enjoyed seeing the world that way,” she says.