Katie Clarke

Currently: Discovering Italy and true love nightly as innocent ingénue Clara Johnson in The Light in the Piazza.

Hometown: Friendswood, Texas. A fresh-from-the-kickline graduate of Sam Houston State University's theater program, Clarke's story is the stuff of little girls' dreams. She caught the performing bug in high school when she began doing shows at a local Methodist Church under the encouragement of the woman she calls her musical theater mentor—Laney Carlin. While Clarke was in New York one summer participating in an intensive dance program at NYU, Carlin suggested that the fair-haired soprano meet with a college buddy who was now working on Broadway as a conductor and musical director. "I met Kim [Grigsby] and talked to her about what it would be like to move to New York and sang for her. We hit it off right away." But as she puts it, "that was that," and Clarke headed back to Texas.

As Luck Would Have It: As Clarke neared the end of her last semester of college, the search was in full swing in New York for a newcomer to play Clara in the Broadway production of The Light in The Piazza, where Grigsby was now conducting the orchestra. Original cast member Kelli O'Hara had left the show to play Babe Williams opposite Harry Connick Jr. in The Pajama Game—ironically, Clarke's first-ever stage role in Texas. "They held auditions for Kelli's replacement, and they weren't having much luck, I guess, so one day [Lincoln Center casting director] Janet [Foster] came to Kim and said, 'Do you know anyone?' and Kim said, ‘Well actually, yes…but I think she's still in college, and I haven't talked to her in a year and a half!'" Clarke giggles. "But then I was driving home from class one day and checking my messages and there was a call from Janet asking me to come to New York for an audition. Literally, I had to pull the car over. I was just hyperventilating."

Quick Fix: "I got that message on a Wednesday, and I was in New York City on the following Monday," she continues. At that point, Clarke had only been on two—"Two!"—professional auditions and knew next to nothing about Piazza and Adam Guettel's complex score. She extended her stay to do a callback in front of the entire creative team minus Guettel. "I met my mom in a café afterward and I was like, ‘Well I think they like me but nothing was decided,'" she recalls. "And we were sitting there in the café just excited and then the casting director calls and says, ‘Well, we're ready to offer you a contract.' We had a big freak out moment!" The newly crowned Broadway baby headed back to college, packed up her life, and was back in New York three days later to start rehearsals.

Is It Hot in Here?: The Lincoln Center crew welcomed their new light to the Piazza with open arms. "It's an amazing place to start," she says. "I mean, it's beautiful. You should go in the bathroom–there's a heated toilet seat!" When Chris Sarandon, who plays Clarke's father-in-law to-be, heard that his new castmate had moved to New York with only a raincoat, his wife Joanna Gleason currently of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels quickly passed along one of her winter coats to the newbie. "I wore it for literally, probably two months, until I could go get myself a new one!"

Clear as a Bell: Her own whirlwind journey to the Big Apple has provided fitting life experience to help Clarke find her character, Clara. Throughout the course of the show, Clara expands her world from the shelter of her mother's cautious care in North Carolina to falling for her true love and learning a new language amidst the statues of Italy. But she's found that her character has some things to teach her as well. "She kind of has this open exchange with the universe," she says. "The perfect example would be the title song of the show, where it is so clear to Clara what she's trying to say at that moment. She just connects with that light that she's seeing and the light that she's feeling. Her feelings are all so clear and so genius and honest, possibly because there is a childlike quality to her," she says with the same curiosity that brings her Clara to life every night at the Beaumont.