After six years of being a rocket scientist for Boeing, Maggie Stenson Pehrson decided to become an actress. She gave notice and auditioned for a musical. That was 20 years ago. And she's never looked back.
Now Pehrson, along with her architect husband Clint and their two sons, Joshua and Gabriel, lives on Queen Anne. Tall and slender, she exudes confidence and exuberance, and her lilting laughter resonates like a musical phrase. In addition to acting, she's co-producing artistic director for Showtunes!, a company dedicated to concert performances of Broadway's forgotten musicals.
It all started in Calumet, Mich., where Pehrson made her stage debut at age 4 as The Littlest Rosebud in a community theater production of "Thumbelina." "I wore a pink tutu made out of issue paper," she remembers. "And yes, I really liked being onstage."
At 8, Pehrson became besotted with "Camelot," so she memorized the entire musical score. A fledgling soprano, she could even imitate Julie Andrews' accent. After several years of command performances for her parents and their friends, Pehrson was cast as Morgan Le Fay in a high school production.
When it came time to plan her future, Pehrson couldn't decide whether to study performing arts in college - or something else. A career counselor advised her, "You're really good at math and science; you should go into engineering."
"I'd always loved the space program," Pehrson mused, "so I thought, 'OK, I'll do aerospace.' But with just a year left on my degree at the University of Michigan, I called my parents and said, 'This is not working for me. I really want to go into performing.' They convinced me to finish my engineering degree so I'd have something to fall back on."
In 1981, she started working for Boeing's aerospace program. Although Pehrson loved her co-workers, she felt she was circumventing her destiny. "I decided to audition for the musical 'Eleanor' at the Village Theatre. The next day, I went into work, gave notice and found out I was cast as Lucy Mercer, Franklin Roosevelt's affair. I left Boeing on a Friday and the following Monday started rehearsals. I looked at this as confirmation that I was doing the right thing."
A decade ago, Pehrson met David-Edward Hughes, now her Showtunes! co-producing artistic director. "David and I both had this idea of doing musicals in concert," she recalls. "So we went out to lunch and talked about how Seattle didn't have this kind of company, and how we should combine our producing backgrounds and his encyclopedic knowledge of musical theater. Thus, the not-for-profit Showtunes!Theatre Company was born. Our first venture was 'Anyone Can Whistle' in January 2000."
After bouncing from venue to venue until 2005, Showtunes! took up residence at Kirkland Performance Center, where it has just announced the company's third season. Like New York City's wildly popular Encores! - one of the hottest tickets in the Big Apple - Showtunes! introduces audiences to unfamiliar musicals. People can hear the wonderful music, and sometimes maybe the not-so-wonderful music, as well as the books for the shows, for virtually the first time.
Pehrson and Hughes' collaboration continues to blossom and grow. For almost eight years Showtunes! has been a labor of love. "Maggie is one of a kind," Hughes rhapsodizes. "Beautiful, generous, often zany and more interested in the big picture than in self-aggrandizement. We both have given a lot of blood, sweat and tears to this company, not to mention cold hard cash - Maggie more than I. But together, we've made our shared dreams a reality."
On Saturday, June 30, at KPC, Hughes, a true renaissance man, is directing a concert version of Broadway icon Charles Strouse's newest work, "Dancing With Time." It's the West Coast première - and the annual benefit for Showtunes!. For the first time Strouse has written not only the music but the lyrics and book as well. A musical-within-a-musical, the show unfolds in a modern-day New York City rehearsal studio with flashbacks to Nixon's era in Washington, D.C. Strouse sums up the story as being about "a young musician who learns that love comes when you least expect it."
If you're not immediately familiar with Strouse, he's the Tony-winning composer of blockbuster musicals, including "Annie," "Bye Bye Birdie" and "Applause." Strouse also wrote a musical ditty called "Those Were the Days," the opening theme for the mega-hit TV series, "All in the Family."
Showtunes! first hooked up with Strouse last fall when Pehrson and Hughes co-produced his musical, "It's A Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman." Strouse even flew out for the performance.
He will also be the honored guest at the June 30 gala reception. "We'll have a short Q&A following the concert," Pehrson explains, "so he can get feedback. And we're going to hold a raffle called 'Serenade by Strouse.' If you have the winning ticket, you'll be called onstage where he'll sing you the song of your choice, from a roster of five.
"Plus we're taping it, so you'll also get a DVD."
Although Pehrson won't be performing in this benefit, thus far in her acting career she has played a range of roles, from dramatic turns like Hecuba in "Trojan Women" and Queen Gertrude in "Hamlet," to Elsa in "The Sound of Music" and "Adelaide in "Guys and Dolls."
For Showtunes!, she has played Lizzie in "110 in the Shade" and Constance in "Dear World," among other roles. In 1999, Pehrson won a coveted Seattle Times Footlight Award for her performance in the revival of "Eleanor" at Village Theatre, this time playing the great lady herself. Pehrson has also done stints on TV's "Northern Exposure" and the short-lived "Citizen Baines." And this coming November, she will be seen at Village Theatre in "Love Is Love," a new musical by Richard Gray with lyrics/book by Martin Charnin, who coincidentally collaborated with Strouse as the lyricist for "Annie."
If you quiz her, Pehrson harbors no regrets about cutting short her rocket science career, though she readily admits her desire to become an astronaut. "One of the reasons I chose aerospace in the first place is because I grew up with 'Star Trek.' I watched men land on the moon and followed the space program religiously. So it wasn't just a fluke that led me into aerospace.
"Maybe I'll sing about it someday. I guess I'll have to commission a space musical. Anyway, it will make a great conversation on 'Letterman.' "
[[In-content Ad]]
