Teen Davenport Singer-Songwriter to Kick Off New Performing Arts Series
A young Davenport singer-songwriter has already pursued her dreams in Los Angeles and Nashville, and she hasn’t even finished high school yet.
Cameryn Danielle Bergthold is a 17-year-old actress, singer, and songwriter (who performs as Cameryn Danielle). She began performing at the age of five in a production of “Annie Jr.” at Center for Living Arts, Rock Island, and she will take that downtown stage solo in a special show Saturday, Nov. 1 at 7 p.m.
A new series, “Stage Time,” is planned to be once a month at the Center for Living Arts, 220 19th St., Rock Island. Dino Hayz, the Center co-owner and creative director, said their theater was always aimed to be a community building, and he wants to add to the variety of offerings.
“When I was a young performer, I was looking for anywhere I could get to sing or act,” he said recently. Hayz hosted CLA alum Liz Coin for her one-woman show “Lizzy Sunshine” in August 2024, and Cameryn makes a natural next guest, as she’s an 11-year-veteran of the Center.
Cameryn plans to graduate from Davenport North in December, and study for a bachelor’s in musical theater starting in fall 2026.
“We’ve watched her progress – she’s incredibly talented,” he said, crediting one of his favorite shows she starred in last March, the CLA production of “Mean Girls.”
Cameryn said Wednesday that she and her sister Casey started theater at the same time, after admiring a production of “Grease” there, so they tried out for “Annie.” That was in the old location on 4th Avenue; Center for Living Arts has been at 220 19th St. since 2019, when Cameryn got to be her dream role of Elsa in “Frozen Jr.”
“It’s one of my favorite roles by far,” she said. “They had this spiral staircase that had its own platform, and remember going up there for ‘Let It Go,’ the ice castle part. It was so fun.”
She loved watching Disney musicals growing up, pretty much all the princesses, but loved “Snow White” the most.
Cameryn starred as Regina in “Mean Girls” at Center for Living Arts in March 2025.
Cameryn debuted in her first professional performance at Circa ‘21 in December 2021, in “Winter Wonderland,” but hasn’t been in any Circa shows since.
In grade school she was more into sports (mainly softball), but a back injury in 8th grade stopped her sports career after that year. Cameryn mainly did theater in the fall and softball in the summer. “I wanted to go to college for softball,” she said. “I had a spine injury, and that’s when I started taking performing seriously and that’s what I want to do.”
She’s planning to graduate from Davenport North in December, and attend college for musical theater starting in fall 2026. At North, she was in “Something Rotten,” “Seussical,” “Newsies” and “High School Musical Jr.”
Cameryn also had a plum role in “Mean Girls,” as Regina this past March at Center for Living Arts. “My sister plays musical theater all the time in the house, and I heard ‘World Burn’ and I just loved that song. I’d listen to it over and over. Eventually, I saw the musical and I saw the movie, and thought, ‘I have to do this.’ This musical is incredible.”
CLA just has rehearsals for its shows once a week, and Cameryn said: “I really like the creative freedom that Dino gives us, because if we need help, we can say ‘Hey, I want to work on this solo or this part of the show.’ Other than that, he gives us staging and blocking, but aside from that we can create the characters.”
For the CLA high school shows, they typically rehearse for six months. Cameryn will be in “All Shook Up” at the Center in March 2026, as Miss Sandra.
It was a challenge to balance both CLA and high school rehearsals, but she’s been able to manage with the directors.
Hitting the big city
As a freshman, her mom found a talent group on Facebook, and Cameryn sang on Zoom for a talent scout, and she got a call back. She did Zoom trainings for two months. Cameryn was able to perform (“Break Free” by Ariana Grande) at a Zoom showcase in fall 2022, and that’s when she signed with a management company.
“That same showcase was an audition for the iPOP thing in Anaheim, California,” she said of the International Presentation of Performers (iPOP) in Los Angeles in January 2023. “Then I got picked for that and everything took off from there. It was so fun.”
Cameryn began training professionally in 2022 with National Performers Academy and NYLA Talent over the course of four months before auditioning and attending iPOP. The same year, Cameryn worked with music producer James Lugo in April 2023 to record her first cover, “I Wish” by Stevie Wonder in Nashville.
Cameryn Danielle already has recorded a number of original songs, including in Nashville and Los Angeles.
She met him at the iPOP showcase, and did a workshop with him. The Nashville studio session was her first recording. “It was so cool,” Cameryn said, noting she was inspired partly by that song’s use in “Happy Feet.”
In May of 2023, Cameryn wrote her first pop single, “Brush You Off,” released January 12, 2024.
She hit a milestone in her nascent career when she produced and released “E.T.” (Katy Perry cover) audio and produced and directed the music video on January 27, 2024. Cameryn and her sister collaborated on making the video, including filming at West Lake Park, near where they live.
Writing original songs
Cameryn has been writing her own songs since 2023; she’s played piano since she was 5. Producers told her she had to write her own stuff, partly to save money from paying others.
“I just didn’t want to write,” she said. “I thought it was so hard. I had tried before, but I didn’t know what I was doing. A couple months after, I just sat down at my piano and I just randomly started writing songs. I kept going after that, and actually, I do like writing songs. I should keep trying. I never took any class or anything.”
“A lot of the time when I’m writing, I don’t think about anything,” Cameryn said. “I’ll get a chord progression down first and then I’ll start singing and humming, and by the end, I’ll just have something.” She’s penned pieces within 30 to 60 minutes.
Cameryn Danielle, a 17-year-old Davenport North student, will give a solo concert Saturday, Nov. 1, at Center for Living Arts in downtown Rock Island.
She’s recorded in Nashville twice, and recorded in L.A. last fall.
Cameryn wanted the video for her new single “Draw My Face” (audio recorded in L.A. in September of 2024) to be very broad, so people can interpret it in a number of ways, and relate to it.
“I wanted to do something with self-image and how people view the world,” she said, noting the song deals with identity and two characters covered in glitter represent how many people just look at the surface of things. There’s also a broken mirror, symbolizing how “we’re all broken in some way,” she said.
“The sparkly people is like, people are drawn to what’s on the outside,” Cameryn said. “We distance ourselves and it’s not real connection. We do whatever we can to dress ourselves up, but it’s not about that. It’s what’s on the inside that counts, what we should be looking for.”
There’s also a slithering snake, which doesn’t have a precise meaning in the video.
Cameryn performing on “Living Local” on WHBF-TV.
Cameryn worked with local videographer Nick Campos to produce the video, and they edited it together. They filmed it at Sound Conservatory in Moline, where she performed at a concert last December. She had also worked there between January and June 2025.
On Saturday, Cameryn will play a lot of originals, in two 30-minute sets. She’ll accompany herself on piano.
She is not planning on recording a full-length album soon, because of the expense, but instead focus more on singles. She’s considering attending Emerson College in Massachusetts and New York University.
Cameryn called her style pop, and her favorite artists/influences include Demi Lovato (“her music and songs are very vulnerable and I love that kind of music”) and Ariana Grande. She can’t wait to see the new movie “Wicked: For Good” (co-starring Grande as Glinda), soon after she turns 18 on Nov. 14.
For more information, visit Cameryn’s website HERE.
