Meet the Cruise Ship Performer Who Found Her Biggest Stage at Sea

This is the latest installment of our bimonthly column Crews on Cruise, spotlighting the people who work behind the scenes of the world’s most memorable voyages—from bartenders and entertainers to ship captains and expedition leaders.Bettina Lobo thought working on a cruise ship would be a one-and-done adventure. Born and raised in Venezuela, she became obsessed with musical theater after her parents showed her The Phantom of the Opera film when she was six. She later moved to New York City and earned a B.F.A. from The New School. But as an international performer navigating US visa restrictions, Broadway was not immediately accessible to her. Cruise ships were.“I thought, let me do one contract, travel the world, and then I’ll be back in New York in no time,” says Lobo. More than five years later, she is still performing with Celebrity Cruises—and even met her fiancé, a Serbian bar manager, along the way. The two now try to coordinate their contracts so they can work aboard the same ship, something Celebrity makes an effort to accommodate for couples.Lobo’s first contract lasted only a week before the pandemic shut the cruise industry down. She joined Celebrity Edge as part of the ship’s return-to-service cast, rehearsing onboard under strict health protocols. Crew members were not permitted to disembark during her eight-month contract, but the isolation brought them unusually close. “We made such a family,” she says. “It was a really good way to start.”Lobo went on to appear on Celebrity Beyond and Celebrity Ascent and is now a vocalist and cast member on Celebrity Xcel, the brand’s newest ship. The 3,260-passenger vessel spends its seasons cruising the Caribbean and Europe. As part of its 18-person theater cast, Lobo covers everything from P!NK and Elton John to Andrea Bocelli, Ariana Grande, and Eminem. In one production, set on a 1920s movie lot, she plays an imperious Hollywood star whose big number moves from “Over the Rainbow” to “Lose Yourself” and finishes with “Don’t Rain on My Parade.”We caught up with Lobo earlier this year to talk about learning to rap, the strange intimacy of shipboard life, and her favorite seaside villages in France.What does a typical day on the job look like?“If it’s a sea day and we have a show, I’ll usually wake up around 10 or 10:30 a.m. Our rooms are like little caves—they’re completely blacked out—so unless I put on an alarm, I’m not waking up. I do my morning routine, FaceTime home, and eat in the crew mess.Then we’ll have a notes session. Every show is recorded, and our vocal captain and dance captain review the performance from the week before. They might say, ‘You should sing this part this way,’ or, ‘Your hand needs to be here instead of there.’ They’re very meticulous about making sure the production stays the way it was originally created.After that, we do a vocal and physical warm-up, followed by a technical run-through without costumes or makeup. Celebrity Xcel has huge screens that move and scenic elements that rise out of the stage, so we need to make sure everything is working. That process might take us until 4 p.m.Then it’s nap time. A lot of us take a quick 45-minute nap before hair and makeup. We usually perform two shows, at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., three times a week, plus two smaller shows in the club.”What is your favorite part about this job?“I love the challenge. It’s the reason I’ve stayed. This is the only job where, in the same week, I get to sing every style of music: jazz, musical theater, pop, rock, and rap—sometimes in the same show. It’s crazy how quickly the styles change.I came here as a very musical-theater singer. I never considered myself a pop singer, and I hadn’t had many opportunities to sing rock back home. Now I’ve learned pop, rock, and they even have me rapping. I’ve done Salt-N-Pepa, and now I’m doing Eminem. I’ve grown so much, both professionally and as a person.”What is the most challenging part about working at sea?“Because the productions are so massive, you have to be a strong mover; that’s what we call singers who dance. I’ve always loved entertaining people, but, oh, my God, I couldn’t coordinate my feet. I didn’t know jazz or tap. I started learning those styles in college, but it wasn’t until I came here that I began to consider myself an actual dancer. Now I can do it.And, of course, being away from your family can get hard. I have a huge, very close family. Most of my mom’s side, including my parents, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew, live in Venezuela. I’m lucky because my dad’s family is in the United States, and my grandmother lives in Florida, so on embarkation days I can sometimes get off the ship and see her. At Christmas, I go to her house and have breakfast. Not everyone working onboard gets that.”What is the coolest or weirdest thing about living on a ship?“Living and working with your coworkers 24/7. You have to find a way to coexist with people from many different cultures. It broadens the way you communicate, how you understand people, and your capacity for empathy.It’s also weird that I can be at work in 30 seconds. My commute is three sets of stairs. The gym is one elevator ride away. Before this, you had to drive to the gym or commute to work. Here, there are no excuses. I don’t think living that close to everything will ever feel normal. I try not to take it for granted.”What is your favorite place you’ve traveled so far?“Europe has my heart. One of my favorites is Villefranche-sur-Mer in France. It’s this tiny town by the sea that looks a little like Beauty and the Beast to me. Then you can take a train and, in 10 minutes, you’re in Nice. You can also take the train to Monte Carlo. It’s insane that from this one tiny place, you can travel to all of these bucket-list destinations.My parents sparked the travel bug in me. My dad is originally from Mozambique, and my mom is Venezuelan, so they made a point of showing us the world. But I didn’t know that I could travel and work at the same time. Cruise ships have taken me beyond the cities everyone knows, like New York and Paris, and into tiny villages I probably never would have visited otherwise.”What is your favorite place to hang out on board the ship?“The cast has access to many of the same spaces and amenities as guests. That means we can give people genuine recommendations about what to see and where to go.I love trying the restaurants. There’s a new restaurant aboard Celebrity Xcel, for example, called Bora, which serves Mediterranean food and feels like you’re in Santorini.”Tell us about a memorable guest interaction that sticks out to you.“After our shows, we sometimes stand at the back of the theater to thank guests for coming. One night, I was talking to an American family who had seen me perform on more than one Celebrity ship. They mentioned that they had just gone to a Taylor Swift concert in Amsterdam.One of my castmates at the time, an Irish dancer named Dan, was obsessed with Taylor Swift. If you say her name, he starts crying. Their daughter, who was around 12, said she had saved some confetti from the concert and asked if she should give it to him.I said, ‘Yes. Absolutely.’ I went to find Dan while she went to get the confetti. I asked her, ‘Are you sure you want to give this away?’ She said, ‘We love you guys so much. Of course we want him to have it.’Dan was already crying when I told him they had been to the concert. Then she handed him the confetti, and he started weeping. He said he needed security to escort him down I-95—the main crew corridor that runs through the ship—because he couldn’t let anyone take it from him.That little girl didn’t need to give him something that mattered so much to her, but she did. We had touched her through the shows, and she extended that kindness back to us.”What’s your top tip for first-time cruisers?“Watch the entertainment! I know that sounds obvious coming from me, but the productions are the reason I keep coming back as an artist. They’re incredibly fulfilling to perform, and you get to see these huge, Vegas-style shows as part of your cruise.”