Loretta Ables Sayre

Hometown: Honolulu. Sayre was born in Stockton, California, but her family relocated to Hawaii when she was six. "And we never left. That's where my roots are."

Currently: Making her Broadway debut as Bloody Mary in the Lincoln Center revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific and reeling from her first Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

Younger Than Springtime: Although native Hawaiians can be biased against transplants from the U.S. mainland, Sayre never felt out of place. "We were hapa, not haole," she explains, using the Hawaiian terms for "half-white" and "Caucasian," respectively. "My stepfather was haole. My real father was Filipino. My mother was Filipino, Spanish, Chinese and French. We were short, brown people, and in Hawaii, they're all short, brown people." Still, the new locale took some time to adjust to. "We went to school, and the kids spoke funny. We couldn't understand them. Later on, we learned that was Pidgin English—it was all this slang. And you had to learn to speak it, too, if you were going to communicate with the local people."

You Have to Be Carefully Taught: Entranced by her mother's Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan albums at the wee age of four, Sayre sang in choruses and school plays throughout elementary school. She became familiar with South Pacific in high school when her drama teacher staged makeshift productions of the musical: "It was like a readers' theater version of the show, just two or three people. He would read Emile de Becque and I'd read and sing the female parts." After college, Sayre worked as an entertainer at a hotel that was built on site of de Becque's house in the 1958 movie. "We didn't do the script, but we would wear the costumes and do all the music. I did that for many years."

Some Enchanted Evening: In 1978, Sayre sang on the local pop hit "Honolulu City Lights" with veteran Hawaiian musicians Keola and Kapono Beamer. She was able to parlay that success into a long, steady career as a singer, performing jazz and R&B standards at resorts and conventions throughout the Honolulu-Waikiki area. "They were nice, beautiful rooms, but after almost 20 years, I was getting burned out," she says now. "I still wanted to sing, but I was also thinking it might be time to try something different, like work for a non-profit." Fortunately, her friend Randl Ask, a New York theater vet who'd relocated to Hawaii, urged a frustrated South Pacific casting director to hold auditions in Honolulu. "He said, 'You guys are doing South Pacific,'" Sayre recalls. "'Have you thought about looking in…the South Pacific?'"

This Nearly Was Mine: Feeling rusty and believing her chances of landing the role of Bloody Mary were nil, Sayre gave in to her husband's encouragement and auditioned. Three days later, she was handpicked by director Bartlett Sher to fly to New York for a callback. "They told me I'd be reading with someone named Andre. I assumed he was the guy auditioning for Lt. Cable, not knowing they meant Andre Bishop, the artistic director of Lincoln Center. I walked in the room and was like, 'Where's Lt. Cable?' I was so embarrassed!" Another bit of Broadway lingo further tripped her up. "They kept telling me, 'You'll be meeting the R&H people.' And it's like, 'I don't know who that is, but okay.' Then I walk into a room and hear, 'This is Alice Hammerstein and Mary Rodgers.' Suddenly, I'm this 10-year-old seeing The Sound of Music…" Sayre chokes up, just barely able to say she was offered the role right there. "I can't tell you how surreal this is. From the land of shrunken heads to this. Boy!"

A Cockeyed Optimist: Sayre's been doing a lot of choking up since reporting to work at Lincoln Center Theater, particularly after singing "Bali Ha'i" with the show's 30-piece orchestra for the first time. "I'd only been accompanied by a piano or a jazz trio before. To raise my voice and have it carried by this orchestra, playing this beautiful arrangement with strings and harp and everything—I sang the last note, and my tears started, and they wouldn't stop. I cried and cried and cried." Now the show's a smash hit, with 11 Tony nominations, and Sayre is performing for the likes of Steven Spielberg and Nicole Kidman. Stephen Sondheim sent Raul Esparza to deliver his sincere respects. "And Bette Midler came backstage! She grew up in Hawaii, too. We graduated from the same high school. It was not only a thrill to meet her, but we ended up talking Pidgin to each other. It was wonderful, it was…" More tears, then this first-time Tony nominee collects herself. "I mean, what do you do after you've done something like this? I'll need to make up some brand new dreams. They're all coming true right now."