For Sarah Connell, Grease is definitely the word.
The '50s nostalgia musical, opening at Stage West tonight, is not only one of this petite blonde performer's favourite shows, but it also marks her first leading professional role in the Toronto area.
She's playing Sandy Olsson, the vanilla-frosted cupcake who finally drops her good-girl image to win the heart of black-leather jacketed bad boy Danny Zuko.
Although the show was a hit Broadway musical six years before it hit the silver screen, it's the cinematic version starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John that most people remember.
"I must have seen the movie a million times." sighs Connell. "I lived by it, I swear! The music is great and the film was so much a part of people's lives."
Connell is on a well-deserved day off after an exhausting preview and rehearsal period, but her enthusiasm for the project is contagious.
"I love playing the part of Sandy! She's sweet and innocent, but she's got this other side to her. She's just trying to fit in, like everybody else."
Connell has been one of the lucky ones in her chosen profession who seemed to fit in from the very start. Born and raised in Ottawa, she started dancing when she was only three. "First it was ballet," she recalls, "then jazz and the other stuff. I grew up dancing."
But she didn't find a focus for her performing skills until she was 12. Then she went to see Cats.
"That was the first show I ever saw and my dance teacher's daughter got into the cast. When I saw her, I though `Hey, this is something you could actually do for a living.'"
Fortunately for Connell, her hometown featured for a few years a unique organization dedicated to training young people in musical theatre.
"It was called the Company of Musical Theatre and it was run by a wonderful man named Peter Evans until he passed away in 1997. He was a really good leader and he treated us all like we were professionals."
Connell began working with them in 1991 when she was 13 on the Cliff Jones musical, Babies, and stayed with the group until she reached 18 and went to Sheridan College's Musical Theatre Program.
"I loved Sheridan," she says proudly. "I had a great experience. The classes were intense and our teachers were great. It's the one real program in Canada to study musical theatre."
She concedes that it was a highly artificial existence, but a good one. "Sure, you're surrounded by musical theatre geeks, but if that's what you want to do with your life, they're good people to be surrounded by."
But every training period has to end and Connell confesses that, "When I first graduated and stepped into the real world, it was scary. School has been a safe place and suddenly I was auditioning opposite hundreds of other people."
She did well, though and her first job was a typical young performer's rite of passage: singing and dancing on a cruise ship.
But there was one fantastic omen. Dancing in the next studio was the late Gregory Hines.
"The very first Broadway show I had ever seen was Jelly's Last Jam, and I'll always remember the electricity of his first entrance. And now, here I was, rehearsing next to him."
Over the next few years, Connell would land a constant variety of jobs in the chorus at Stage West or on the Ontario summer stock circuit, but the big shows eluded her.
"I really wanted to be in Hairspray, because it seemed so fun, but I didn't make it. You have to be willing to deal with rejection. I've learned that in this business you're going to be let down more often than you're built up and you just have to deal with it."
Right now things are going well for Connell, with a leading role in a show she loves and an engagement to Matt Cassidy, who's currently rehearsing in The Lord of the Rings.
Their wedding is set for next September, but before that, she's got to win the heart of Danny Zuko every night through February 19th.
It's a tough job, but Sarah Connell's the girl to do it. "If there's one thing I learned," she concludes, "it's that you've got to have confidence in yourself. Just keep going."