From Brainerd to Broadway

Posted at 9:20 AM on June 7, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Arts around the state, Music, People, Theater

Linda Eder

Last night high school students from around the state performed on stage at the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis as part of the annual Spotlight Showcase Awards.

There to present the awards was Broadway star Linda Eder. Eder says she got her start in musical theater playing Mother Abbess in "The Sound of Music" at her high school in Brainerd. She says she was instantly hooked.

It's the oddest thing in the world and the most wonderful thing in the world because it's like playing. Remember how when you were young and your parents would take you over to someone's house and the kids would always go to the basement and we would just be playing non-stop for hours until they called down and said "we're going home," and we'd all be "aaawhhh!" Everything was fun - no matter what you did, it was fun. And that's kind of what theater is like/ It's an isolated world - small, confined, intimate...and the fact that you have a living breathing audience there. It just all adds into this thing that is surreal and magical and if you have that in you at all - the minute I step foot on a stage I knew that was what I wanted.

You can hear Eder's interview with MPR's Euan Kerr by clicking on the audio link below:

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