From Dreams to Doing

Orlando performer Janine Klein took a detour while discovering career success at home and in the Big Apple.

- Loraine O’connell

JANINE KLEIN BEGAN dreaming of Broadway fame in kindergarten.“I had posters of New York City,” says Klein, who grew up in Florida and New York State. “I dreamed of it.” On visits to the city, she says, she’d pick up the show flyers tossed out on streets and staple them to her bedroom walls.

“I was obsessed, to be honest.”

Known among Central Florida’s theater performers and audiences for her powerful voice and her ability to play everything from a brassy broad to a vulnerable naïf, Klein is finally finding success beyond Florida—but she’s no longer obsessed with Broadway.

“She’s a brilliant singer and also very funny,” says Laurel Clark,executive show director at Sleuths Mystery Dinner Shows. Clark watched Klein mature from a child performer at the former Civic eatre to the adult actor and singer whose Orlando Fringe shows sell out.