She's finding her voice onstage
Gospel singer enjoying her first theater role in `Walking Across Egypt'
JULIE YORK COPPENS
Theater Writer

A dogcatcher does some emergency carpentry. A deputy sheriff, in pursuit of a suspect, suddenly joins the church choir. A nice old lady feeds a kid some pound cake and soon finds herself in charge of a one-woman hoodlum-rehabilitation program.

Seems like all the good folks in Clyde Edgerton's book "Walking Across Egypt" are working outside their job descriptions. Fitting, then, that one performer in the novel's stage version, opening this week at Theatre Charlotte, has no acting credentials. She's a gospel singer.

Kecia Capers, 42, grew up in Islandton, S.C., and has lived in Charlotte for 11 years. She's been singing since middle school -- mainly in church, most recently at Greater Salem City of God on the west side. She also sings at weddings and travels for occasional gigs with the Perfecting Praise Chorale. Until landing a supporting role in "Walking Across Egypt," she'd never appeared on stage.

"This was my first audition. I was scared to death," Capers admits, laughing. "But I always wanted to know what it (acting) was like."

Someone at Grant Thornton LLP, the accounting firm where Capers works, happened to be on the board of Theatre Charlotte, and told Capers about the open call for "Walking Across Egypt." Reid Leonard, director of Piedmont Players in Salisbury, wrote the stage adaptation with Edgerton's blessing; the play, like the book, is infused with the old church hymns that comfort 78-year-old Mattie Rigsbee when life gets complicated.

"I was like, `Well, what do you have to do?' And they said, `Sing a gospel song and read from the script.' I thought, `OK, I can do that.' And then I got called back. I was like, `What's a callback?' "

Director Dennis Delamar says 68 people auditioned for the play's 17 speaking roles. Capers was an obvious choice for the choir, which makes up much of the play's ensemble, but none of the principal parts seemed right for her -- until Delamar had an idea.

"There is something about Kecia's spirit that speaks to me, something that's loving and right," the director says. So he made Capers a soloist in the choir and, at key points in the story, an angel who watches over Mattie while Mattie tries to take care of everybody else: her two grown children, her nosy neighbors, a stray dog, the dogcatcher, the dogcatcher's orphaned nephew and anyone else who stops by at mealtime.

"When I heard her for the first time, it was in the theater lobby. She sent shivers up my spine," says Annette Gill, who stars as Mattie Rigsbee in the Theatre Charlotte production. "I could feel sort of this lump forming in my own chest."

"Once you hear her sing, you know why (Delamar) put her in this show," says Andrew Clark, who plays Wesley, a juvenile delinquent redeemed by Mattie's home cooking. "Her voice -- it's so clear. It's perfect-pitch. She could be a singing angel."

Capers' very presence in "Walking Across Egypt" underscores Edgerton's theme. When a skinny little mutt shows up on her doorstep, Mattie's first impulse is to call the pound: "I got as much business keeping a dog as I got walking across Egypt," she says in the first scene of the play (and novel).

"That was me," Capers says. "Work. Church. Then somebody says, `Oh, why don't you try auditioning for `Walking Across Egypt'? And I say, `Oh, I don't know if I can do that ...' "

When something comes up in life that seems not-according-to-plan, Capers says, "It's God's way of stretching us. And maybe you doing that will influence somebody else."

Theatre Charlotte expects a near sellout for "Egypt," which means that Capers has an opportunity to touch a lot of people with that amazing voice. Asked where it came from, Capers does not hesitate:

"The Lord. Definitely the Lord. He's given me the gift of song," Capers says. "I really, really enjoy sharing my gift. Any chance I get to do it, I'll do it. But I couldn't do it without Him. I think I would be afraid to."

WALKING ACROSS EGYPT

A gospel-infused staging of Clyde Edgerton's novel set in a small N.C. town.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and Feb. 7-9; 2:30 p.m. Feb. 3 and 10.

WHERE: Theatre Charlotte, 501 Queens Road. ADMISSION:

$10-$21.

DETAILS: 704-334-9128; www.theatrecharlotte.org..