Broadway's the Name of the Game for Mamma Mia! Newcomer Alyse Alan Louis

Age: 23

Hometown: Havertown, PA

Currently: Making her Broadway debut as Sophie, the sweet and sassy young bride-to-be, in the smash hit musical Mamma Mia!

Precocious Pro: Never mind school plays—when Louis was 10, she was co-starring with Donna McKechnie! Under her real name, Alyse Wojciechowski (more on that later), she was plucked from children’s classes at Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theatre to play the Tony winner’s daughter Lucy in The Goodbye Girl, winning a Barrymore Award nomination. “That was my first taste of being inspired by a powerful female performer,” Louis says now, “and Donna couldn’t have been nicer; I still keep in touch with her.” Another mentor was composer Jason Robert Brown, who cast Alyse in several industrials and praises her on his blog as “the perfect showbiz brat then…and now a beautiful young woman with a remarkable voice.” Citing Brown and John Caird, who tapped her for a pre-Broadway workshop of Jane Eyre, the bubbly actress notes, “I was lucky to be able to work with a lot of the greats early on. I learned so much!”

Gimme a Head with [No] Hair: Following her older sister Jillian to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Alyse made what sounds like the ultimate sacrifice for a role her sophomore year: She and the rest of the cast in an experimental production of Hair shaved their heads. “The idea was that we were all conforming,” she says, adding, “My mother wasn’t exactly happy about it; when I was growing up, I had really long hair, past my butt.” Bald at 20, she donned wigs only onstage, including, ironically, playing Crissy in a mainstream version of Hair at Philly’s Prince Music Theatre, where she also played Mary in Bright Lights, Big City. “My hair grew back in spurts, but I rocked it,” she says with a laugh. “I wore big earrings.”

What’s in a Name? Though she was building a career with what she calls “my long Polish last name,” Alyse Wojciechowski became Alyse Alan Louis shortly after her graduation from NYU this past spring. “My sister changed her name first,” she explains, choosing their grandfather’s first name as a surname; their mother, who supported the change, came up with “Alan” to balance the alliteration of Alyse Louis. “[Wojciechowski] was getting difficult to say, and I thought, ‘If this is the only obstacle to me meeting my goals, I’ll change it.’” In fact, good things did start to happen to the new Ms. Louis: a concert reading of Babes in Arms with Rosie O’Donnell led to a Mamma Mia! audition with director Phyllida Lloyd. Soon, Louis was in rehearsal with a starry new stage mom, Tony winner Beth Leavel.

Lay All Your Love On Her: Louis first encountered Mamma Mia! as a tenth grader, when she and some girlfriends came to see the show shortly after it opened. “I loved it, especially the finale when everybody is up on their feet dancing,” she says. “I was very familiar with the music, because my mom and dad played ABBA’s Gold album on car trips when I was growing up.” She feels fortunate to step into the Broadway production at the same time as Leavel, noting, “Beth doesn’t have daughters in real life, so it’s fun to play her daughter and spend time talking backstage; our dressing rooms are next to each other.” And you know this self-professed “show kid” is psyched to make her Broadway debut: “It’s a dream come true, and it’s been everything I hoped it would be.”

Honey, Honey: Sophie’s got Sky, and Alyse has Henry, the boyfriend she met when they lived next door to each other freshman year at NYU. “We were good friends first and started dating a couple of years later,” she says of her beau, who lives near her in Queens and has been working as an SAT tutor since graduation. “He’s really, really smart,” she says, “and he he’s also amazing at the guitar. When I had to learn some guitar for Mamma Mia!, I went to him.” For someone like Louis who’s spent a lifetime immersed in acting, "It’s nice to be with someone out of the business," she admits. "I have the best of both worlds.”