Christine Danelson was at the Paper Mill Playhouse, but she wasn’t performing — not in the real sense of the word.
Danelson, about to graduate from Kean University, was appearing at a college exposition at which she was telling high school students why they should spend their next four years in Union.
To the table came some Paper Mill powers-that-be. They remembered Danelson from her own high school days, when she was a member of the playhouse’s Summer Musical Theatre Conservatory.
Danelson was told the season opener in Millburn would be “Hairspray” and was made an offer on the spot.
“But not to appear in the show,” says Danelson.
What the Paper Mill parties had in mind was that Danelson pose for the show’s poster. She’d represent Tracy Turnblad, the overweight but confident Baltimore teenager who must struggle to find acceptance and love.
Danelson says, “I told them I’d be happy to pose for Tracy, but would they mind if I auditioned to play her, too?”
Danelson wasn’t audacious to ask. She has a history with “Hairspray,” dating back to the time when she was at Mother Seton Regional High School in Clark.
“By then,” she says, “my parents knew that I always wanted to see a Broadway show for my birthday. After I saw Rosie O’Donnell in ‘Grease’ when I was seven, I wanted to go to every Broadway musical — and be in them.”
So after Danelson joined the Paper Mill conservatory in 2004, she was thrilled when she was chosen to play Tracy. It was only in one song from the show — “You Can’t Stop the Beat” — but it was a start.
Meanwhile on Broadway, one trip to “Hairspray” was not enough. “I remember our fourth time when we had front row seats,” she says. “I knew every word of every song, and I mouthed them along with the cast. I’m sure they saw me and thought I was this real weirdo.”
Casting directors didn’t, however, after Danelson graduated from Mother Seton, she was immediately tabbed to be in the first national “Hairspray” tour.
“But I was only the standby for Tracy,” she says. “That means I didn’t have a part in the show and spent a lot of time in the dressing room. Luckily, though, I did have a chance to go on a lot.”
Then the tour ended. Danelson enrolled in Kean’s music department — “though I hung around the theater department a lot,” she says. She also started work as a paralegal. Now she’s back onstage, with Christopher Sieber cross-dressing to play her mother.
“Yes, I knew him from Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s TV show,” says Danelson. But she knew him even more from his Broadway shows, which include “Beauty and the Beast,” “Into the Woods” and “Shrek.”
Although Danelson admits to being heavier than doctors’ charts would recommend, she needs to wear a fat-suit to become a convincing Tracy. “I’ve actually lost some weight from rehearsing,” she says. “The suit fits me really well.”
So does this role, and in more ways than one. “I’m very much like Tracy,” she says. “I’m so opinionated and I speak up for everything I believe in. If I see someone being treated unfairly, I’ll say something to the person who’s talking offensively.”
Yet she kept quiet last week when she was insulted on the train ride from her home in Somerville.
“Some man out of the blue said, ‘You’d be so much prettier if you slimmed down,’ ” she says. “I wanted to cry — and then I wanted to tell him off. Then I thought, no, he just doesn’t see what’s important. I’m beautiful whether I slim down or not. I have plenty of people who love me no matter what size I am.”
Hairspray
Where: Paper Mill Playhouse, 3 Brookside Drive, Millburn
When: Through Oct. 24. Wednesdays and Fridays at 7 p.m., Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 1:30 and 7 p.m.
How much: $25 to $92. Call (973) 376-4343 or visit papermill.org.
Peter Filichia; (212) 541-6286 or [email protected]