Q & A: STOMP’s Dilian Cantrell Prepares to Make Some Noise at The Straz Center this Month
STOMP is not your typical Broadway show. No one is belting out show tunes or reciting witty dialogue. Instead, there's noise. LOTS of noise. This hit show originated in England, made its first U.S. premiere at the Orpheum Theatre in New York City in 1994, and has been making a bang at theatres all around the world ever since.
The show doesn't use musical instruments. Instead, it uses random everyday objects like trash cans, brooms, pots, and pans to create rhythmic sounds and “music.” There's no set plot, just lots of synchronized beats and dancing, making this hour and 45-minute show perfect to captivate any attention span. Lucky for us, STOMP is making its way to The Straz Center from December 26-28, making it the perfect family outing for something fun to do between Christmas and New Year's Eve.
We recently had the chance to chat with one of the show's performers, Dilian Cantrell. At 20 years old, Dilian is the youngest cast member in the show and has been showing off his skills in STOMP since September 2023. He first saw the show at just six years old and knew then and there that he wanted to be on that same stage someday.
Tell us about STOMP. This isn’t your typical musical.
Dilian: It was started by a street performer. The creators of the show are Luke (Cresswell) and Steve (McNichols). Luke was a street performer and had a band called Pootsiesnackenburger. He didn't want to bring out his drum set, so he just brought pots and pans and different pieces of trash to be able to play music on the streets, which is what started it all.
As for the show itself, what makes it so unique is that it's different every night. There are 12 of us, but eight perform at a time. We all know different roles. If you see one show after the other, you're going to see a completely different cast. You'll see completely different choices because we truly invite the audience into this world of not knowing what's next. Because even as cast members, we don't know what's going to happen next.
There's really no true plot, so each character, in a way, has their own story that you can kind of follow through. It's not your typical storybook fairytale story, but you'll see one character not getting picked, being the odd one out, and you'll follow him as an audience member. You'll follow the main guy out there, or if you're looking at me, you'll be like, ‘Why is he jumping around and spinning around like a maniac the entire time?’
There’s no true beginning, middle, and end. It's put together of just these awesome pieces that we throw together with some physical comedy and some minor story elements to it.
Is there any dialogue?
Dilian: We say “Oy!” at the beginning of the show to signal that we're on stage, and I'll cough a little bit during a newspaper scene. Other than that, our voices are completely silent. You can come from anywhere and be able to see the show and not have to know a language before seeing it because it's all sounds and movement.
Are there any actual roles or do you do something different in each show?
Dilian: I play two roles. I'm going to say them, and they're going to make no sense to you, but they’re Particle and Potato Head. And there are character guidelines.
For Particle, I'm a dancer first before anything. I go out there and my guideline is I'm going to play this strip of music. I know these are my parts that I'm going to fill in, but I'm going to be more of a mover that night. I'm going to use more of my dance background and do more stuff. And playing Particle, which is like my baby, a role that I love. We have our big final number, and I'm doing different stuff every night. It keeps me on my toes, it keeps everybody else on their toes.
I'm always trying to go out there and improv. When I'm Potato Head, same thing, just on the flip side. It's a different sheet of music, different spots to fill in, but I'm super music heavy and I'm having to really focus on playing a lot more music than moving around.
How do you train and prepare for this show?
Dilian: When they bring you into audition, it's like a three- or four-day audition, depending on how they do it. And then they'll bring you in for a four-to-five-week training where you're in six days a week.
They teach you the bulk of the music at once. But for the first week to two weeks, we learned all the music in the show. So I could play you any section of the show that I don't even do for my role because they want to just get the bulk in there. They'll start branching us out and really just train us in music. The biggest thing for us is music first.
Why do you think that this show would cater to families and to all ages?
Dilian: I saw the show when I was six. I am a huge geek of the show and I'm always here for kids. I think a lot of children that I meet after the show just wanna bang on things. And they're hearing music, and they still love it. And this is truly like a child's paradise to see adults doing what they get yelled at not to do. They're getting yelled at to not make noise. They're getting yelled at to not bang on pots and pans. And that's what we do for a living. So it's like, it's a child's paradise to just be enveloped in this.
From a music perspective, from a theater perspective, they don't have to pay attention. When you're watching a story on stage, you have to follow this story. With us, if your kid gets upset and needs to step out to use the bathroom for 20 minutes, you're not going to miss a crucial part of the story.
The hardest thing is no intermission, but we make up for that because it's just an hour and 45 minutes of just nonstop action. And then, yeah, it allows families to come and just have fun. You can turn your brain off and not have to stress about anything.
And because of the pace of the show and what's going on stage, that hour 45 probably goes by so quickly that you don't even realize that that time. From a performer perspective, it's like you blink and we're done. We say all the time that we black out when we perform.
Speaking of kids, you had the opportunity to guest-teach at your old summer camp.
Dilian: It’s a camp called Triple Threat run by Luis Salgado, who is a legend in the Broadway scene in itself. And I grew up going to that camp for about seven years. That theater in Sanford (Connecticut) just holds so much. I saw Stomp for the first time there.
And then that's basically where I learned, because I'm a dancer first, and I learned all my dance training, but I never jumped out of the box. And then this camp is where they brought a bunch of inner-city children, underprivileged children, me, different parts of the neighborhood, and surrounding towns.
And they brought us in for two weeks, and we would just learn things that as an artist. Things I never learned at my dance studio, and for some of the other kids that I would be in school with, they never thought about dance or thought about body percussion or drumming or acting in any way.
So, it gave a lot of kids in the neighborhood, in the community, different outlets. Two years ago, I came back from tour, and I was like, “I need to see him. I need to say hi, I need to tell him what's been going on.”
I go to pop in, and he offers me that position for last summer, which was truly more rewarding than going on stage. And it's the truth. It's to be able to give back to the community that got me to where I am. I learned everything there. It was one of the most humbling experiences I've ever had.
But it's like, I did it because there could be another six-year-old Dylan in the audience. And this could be his first time in a theater again. And I try to create that experience as much as possible because you never know what the next generation has to offer.
What advice would you give to kids who want to follow in your footsteps?
Dilian: It sounds cliché, but you just got to be open-minded. And for me, I talk about my audition process because my mother makes me crack up every time, but she says my audition process was her first ‘bad mom moment.’
I had an extremely broken ankle for about a month. We went to the orthopedic the week before, and I asked him if I could audition for Stomp. He said, ‘Don't do it.’ So, the Thursday before the audition, she said, ‘I'm going to make a bad mom decision, or I'm going to make a great mom decision.’
That open-mindedness of just walking in. I limped in, and I had to do the audition without the fullest of my ability, but everything else I had to just be open-minded about.
Even being in the show, you're going to get told one thing, which means another thing, but another person's going to tell you this. You just have to be open-minded about it. So that open-mindedness and being like a student at all times is truly the biggest key to victory in the arts and in life.
STOMP at The Straz:
Tickets: strazcenter.org
December 26-28, 2025. Performance times vary.
The Straz Center is located at 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa, FL 33602
Also going on at The Straz Center: Next Generation Ballet's Nutcracker
More things to do this holiday season: The Best Holiday and New Year's Events for Families in Tampa Bay