Artist Spotlight: All Kay Sibal Wanna Do is Spread Asian Pride
“We’re so much more than — beheaded — we’re SIX!” Those were Kay Sibal’s final words as Katherine Howard in SIX The Musical before she took her final bow on February 15, 2026. It has been a year of performances at Broadway’s Lena Horne Theater in New York, and the time has proved that the vocalist is one of a kind, no category. As she passes on the high pink ponytail to the next queen (TikTok sensation Abigail Barlow), Kay reflects on her crowning glory: the impact she left. “It’s the only reason I pursued this,” she shared with EnVi in an interview over Zoom.
When Kay hopped on the call, the sun was reaching its midafternoon peak beneath the wintry New York clouds. However, Kay’s day was just getting started. It’s one thing she can take pride in: a coffee- and protein-fueled daytime routine that doesn’t force her behind a desk from 9 to 5. Performing on Broadway takes her into the late evening hours, after all, and it’s only once the show is over that her day truly begins. But this unorthodox schedule isn’t new for the California-based Filipina artist.
Double Bounce Back
Fans of The Voice probably aren’t strangers to Kay’s name, face, or vocal chops. Before making her Broadway debut, the vocalist leapt into the limelight in 2024, on the 26th season of the singing competition show. A producer had slid an invite into her DMs, which led her to securing a spot — a surprise after multiple previous rejections, including American Idol three years prior. It was a welcome break after numerous acting credits under her belt, both in school and within Los Angeles’s robust regional theater scene.
“I was so used to playing someone else up to this point, and The Voice pushed me into a space where I had to talk about myself,” she said. “It taught me how to articulate myself and tell my own story, while also begging the question of which parts were interesting — for producers, for America. It’s a lesson on how I was perceived, and it wasn’t an easy one.” Ultimately, it was the confidence that slowly built into her through this experience, reshaping and developing her personal artistry.
That same confidence led Kay to final callbacks for SIX The Musical right after her elimination from The Voice in the Knockouts round. Still, her race to the Great White Way wasn’t an overnight sprint. It was a four-year marathon beginning all the way back in 2021, when Kay was in her senior year as a theater major at UCLA. Numerous auditions, callbacks, and flights in and out of New York City were a norm for her throughout that time. Some ended in rejections, but others turned into stepping stones.
In 2023, Kay returned to New York for an audition boot camp alongside 19 other girls — including Kelsie Watts, who would eventually share the Broadway stage with her. However, the opportunity ended in another rejection. She then went on to film The Voice, and, fresh off her elimination, another round of auditions for the musical was already lined up for her.
It’s a serendipitous mirror of her journey to The Voice. “Both of the biggest things in my résumé are things I’ve been rejected from so many times. If that says anything, it’s that sometimes, it’s not a matter of ‘yes’ or ‘no.’” She acknowledged that she has heard “no” many times — from producers of singing competition shows and Broadway casting directors alike. “It’s a matter of time. I had to keep trying for these things.”
Try she did, and it’s paying off. The same week her episode of The Voice aired, she finally received the call: she booked SIX.
The Authenticity of Representation
Broadway has been a lifelong work-in-progress for Kay. And, cementing her self-proclaimed title as a theater kid in the late 2010s, her gateway was contemporary shows that lean into pop music, including Dear Evan Hansen, Hadestown, and SIX. Katherine Howard hadn’t always been top-of-mind when it came to her dream role in the show; she was more partial to Anne Boleyn when she first auditioned.
The part was originated by fellow Filipina actress Andrea Macasaet, “and I thought I was only going to be cast as Anne Boleyn because that’s the Filipina role,” Kay admitted, especially since subsequent castings in the UK also starred Asians as the beheaded queen. “I didn’t even let me see myself as Katherine Howard because it’s hard to see yourself as something that doesn’t look like you.” She partially attributed that to the imposter syndrome that planted its roots when she took on the role of Legally Blonde’s Elle Woods in her junior year of high school: her villain origin story (it really isn’t).
It came out of a desire that sparked after seeing High School Musical and the blonde girl in pink that is Sharpay Evans. Though she resonated with Sharpay, it was her looks that forced her to shove herself into the Gabriella Montez shoe. “Who told you that?” she rebutted. “Why did you assume that was true? Why didn’t you dare to imagine yourself as Sharpay?”
That spirit carried into her back-and-forth audition process to be Katherine Howard: the Sharpay of SIX, as she put it. She found herself growing into her own with the character, putting the “Kay” in Katherine. It was as she donned the high pink ponytail, the queen’s fictionalized sassy attitude, and all the associated stylized sparkly glitz that she found her purpose. “Other Asian girls shouldn’t have the experience that I had growing up, which is the feeling like I can’t. I want to be the person that tells them that they can,” she shared with tears glossing her eyes. “We’re more than just our race or the box next to it we can tick.”
The American theater industry hasn’t historically been the kindest to Asians, much like Tudor times weren’t the nicest to women (and SIX likes to remind everyone of that). Legendary shows centered around Asian culture, like Miss Saigon and The King and I, notoriously carry imperialist and racist undertones, including in their casting track records with yellowface practices. Though names like Eva Noblezada, Darren Criss, Nichole Scherzinger, Ashley Park, and Lea Salonga have become household names — alongside the smash hit Maybe Happy Ending that won big at the 2025 Tony Awards — Asian representation remains somewhat of an afterthought in major productions.
Unlike the regional theater productions in Los Angeles, whose audience may comprise critics and enthusiasts, Broadway’s reach is wider. It is one of New York City’s many appeals, after all. And, with how popular and palatable SIX is, this role became more than just a lifetime opportunity of performance for Kay.
The show is a gateway to the theater world for many — young kids, tourists, queer folk, women — and the diversity that the show champions is an aspiration Kay wants to share with the world. “It battles the idea of who can and should play a certain type of personality. That’s another reason why representation matters on Broadway, because it reaches such an immensely wide audience.”
“Filipino representation is doing so much better these days,” she admitted, “but there’s a lot more of Asia to be represented. We have to keep pushing, because we’re not done. We don’t see enough South and East Asians on stage, and that matters.”
Happy Trails
@musikay Should I do a part 2? #sixonbroadway #musicaltheatre #broadway #makeup ♬ All You Wanna Do (feat. Aimie Atkinson) – SIX
Eight performances weekly of “All You Wanna Do,” arguably one of the musical’s most demanding solos, isn’t an easy task. The character and composition pull inspiration (or queenspiration, as creators Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss call it) from Britney Spears and Ariana Grande. The result is a song that sounds a lot like “Womanizer” served with the attitude of “Jason’s Song (Gave It Away),” a song which Kay has history with. It’s her audition song for SIX, which she reprised in a performance at 54 Below.
“All You Wanna Do” unfolds through four choruses (as Katherine reminds the audience), each grimmer than the last, ending on a dramatic note that mirrors the queen’s real-life beheading. “That’s my favorite type of song to sing: a super fun pop track with a lot of belting, but also tells an important story and conveys the character’s emotions.”
After doing this for a year, the job took a physical toll on her body, too. “Being Asian, I’m wired to neglect care for my body, trading rest for straight As and whatnot. But this show is demanding, so I have to treat my body like a Tamagotchi, with care and respect.”
Leaving the Lena Horne Theater behind, though, it’s not the dressing room adorned with fanart and gifts or the nightly roar of applause as gold confetti rains down on the stage. It’s the five other women she shared those spaces and moments with: Najah Hetsberger (Catherine of Aragon), Gianna Yanelli (Anne Boleyn), Kelsie Watts (Jane Seymour), Krystal Hernández (Anne of Cleves), and Taylor Marie Daniel (Catherine Parr).
“We have become an ecosystem together,” she reminisced. The format of SIX The Musical allows for natural bonds like this to happen. How could it not when it departs from a large ensemble cast, paring it down to just the six queens on stage? And, to take things further, they’re playing a literal pop girl group. “That friendship is unmatched. We’ll still see each other after our Broadway run ends, but the comfort of seeing my people everyday will be missed. But also, I can’t lie, I’ll miss the stability of having secured a job for the year ahead,” she laughed.
Musically “Gifted”
Kay’s journey was a culmination of years of musical training — six hours a week of choir, piano lessons, collegiate acapella groups, and arranging. With Broadway now being a huge check mark on her bucket list, she wants to go back to her roots and expand on that. Covering songs on social media has always been in her wheelhouse, but she also has a penchant for the process of creating music.
She currently has two titles independently released: her 2021 debut “Finally See” and latest newborn “gifted” from June 2025. The latter is a love letter to her late father, spurned out of grief that no other song could properly encapsulate. “I’m a very theatrical person, so as a songwriter, I only write music when I have something to say that won’t come out right unless it’s in a song,” she admitted. “Oftentimes, inspiration comes from intense life experiences, but I’m also trying to be the type of person who can also write on a normal day. So, I also try to find creativity in my boredom.”
Aside from her solo ventures, she has a band of four merry Filipina theater kids. grlhood brings together Kay, Justine Rafael, Audrey Lyn Crabaño (both of whom are currently starring in the LA production of the all-Filipino Here Lies Love), and Leianna Weaver (touring the country as Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice). “This March, we’re all going to be in LA together for the first time since I left for New York last year, so we’ll definitely be singing more songs together,” she said, beaming.
We Have A Voice
One of the hallmarks that makes SIX such a great musical is its contemporary lens, not just in the musical stylizations, but also in its message. As Catherine of Aragon riffs at the climax of the show, these Tudor women — who were sidelined during their reigns — now have a voice. That is especially uplifting and important in the current climate, when marginalized communities are being silenced and erased.
“Many of us Asians are culturally taught to be obedient. We aren’t used to being outspoken, even when we are angered. We’re also used to people seeing our issues as microaggressions. It’s the model minority myth, right?” Kay lets out a derisive chuckle. “It’s also that immigrant mentality, to keep working amid discomfort and even injustice. I hope that changes with how outspoken this new generation of Asians are. I’m so tired of people seeing racism against our community as non-issues.”
Kay’s voice isn’t just a tool to breathe emotions into melodies or belt through a pop-tinged Broadway score. It’s about finding power, creating space, offering relatability, and being a soft place to land for people who might share the same background as her. It’s safe to say that whatever she’s doing next — be it keeping up her thriving TikTok account, reuniting with grlhood, or keeping up her creative wits with a cabaret show, musical directing, and writing new songs (just some bucket list items yet to be ticked off) — she will be doing it with Broadway-level confidence and unparalleled Asian pride.
Follow along on Kay’s post-Broadway journey through her Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube accounts as well as her website.
Interested in more stories by Asian artists? Check out EnVi’s Artist Spotlight with Korean-American singer-songwriter Hanari!
