Long before Sierra Boggess became a mermaid, she was a rather less adorable sea creature.
It was back when she was just a teen, performing dozens of short educational skits a day during a summer job in Denver. Where exactly was that gig? An aquarium.
"I was dressed as a shark," Boggess says, laughing at the memory. "Sometimes I was hammerhead. Sometimes I was a regular shark. I just wanted to sing and dance."
Boggess, 25, is getting plenty of opportunity to do that now as she completes her graduation from shark to the title role of Broadway's "The Little Mermaid."
"This is what I've dreamed of my whole life," she says. "Not my wedding - I was never that girl. It was, 'What will my opening night on Broadway be like?"'
The role of Ariel is one of the best-loved in the Disney canon, a mermaid who falls deeply in love with a human prince and must choose between surf or turf.
Boggess, a huge fan of the 1989 film, says she shares many of her character's traits: independence, fun-loving and stubborn. It also doesn't hurt that she looks the part - a 5-foot-5 (1.65-meter) athletic beauty with wide-set eyes, a ready smile and a siren's voice.
"There is a lot of anxiety that comes with it, a lot of pressure, but you have to deal with it," she says. "Not only am I dealing with a cartoon, but I'm dealing with a mermaid - two things that aren't real."
Thomas Schumacher, the president of Disney Theatrical Group, isn't worried. "I think she's off to become a real star," he says.
During an interview in her dressing room before a recent preview, Boggess wore jeans and huge, fuzzy slippers as she sat cross-legged on a sofa. Though she's barely moved in, she has lovingly arrayed dozens of photos of her all-time inspiration: Barbra Streisand.
Boggess won the role following a five-hour audition in New York during a break from playing Christine in a souped-up version of "The Phantom of the Opera" in Las Vegas.
At the audition, she sang the hit "Part of Your World" and one of the new songs, "Beyond My Wildest Dreams." She danced, she performed with potential princes and sidekicks, and sang some more.
Continue here
