Marina Kondo took in plenty of musicals and other stage productions at the Fisher Theatre while growing up around Oakland County.
Saying she’s “so excited” is an understatement as she comes back as part of the touring company of “Company,” which opens Tuesday, Oct. 17 at the Fisher.
“It’s honestly such a childhood dream come true, getting to do a performance in any capacity in your hometown,” Kondo, 27, says by phone from “Company’s” opening week in Schenectady, New York. “That’s the place I watched Broadway growing up. I went to everything I possibly could. It’s just so surreal to have a moment like that coming up.
“And it’s my first time playing Detroit” since graduating from the University of Michigan in 2017, “so I can’t wait.”
For Kondo, now a Novi resident when not on the road, it also will be a mark of how far she’s come since those days of being in the Fisher audience and developing her craft as a youth in the metro area.
She was born in the Netherlands but moved when she was young after her father, who was working for Mitsubishi, was transferred to Detroit. (Her mother studied early childhood music education at Oakland University.) Kondo attended schools in Bloomfield Hills and Rochester, graduating from Stoney Creek High School. Her first stage production was “Honk The Musical” with the Lakeland Players, and she also acted in shows for the Bloomfield Players and Stagecrafters as well as attending programs at the Interlochen Center for the Arts.
“I totally caught the bug,” recalls Kondo, who performed at Detroit libraries and for Children’s Hospital, as well as events sponsored by General Motors, Nissan, the Japanese Business Society and others. When she was 9 and spending a year in Japan, she also started singing in Tokyo clubs, expanding her creative horizons when musicians introduced her to jazz arrangements of standards such as “Over the Rainbow.”
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