PORT TOWNSEND — When Renata Friedman was in a fifth-grade play, she told her drama teacher: “Some day, I’m going to be on Broadway.”
The teacher, Janette Force, replied: “You do that, and I’ll be there.”
On May 18, Force was in New York City, sitting in the audience at the New Victory Theater as Friedman made her Broadway debut as Helena in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Force was one of a dozen people from Port Townsend who traveled to the Big Apple to see Friedman realize her dream.
In a sense, her debut was a community triumph: Her teachers, her parents and her community helped nurture her Broadway dream since she was in the second grade.
“I don’t know if I would have wanted to be an actress if I’d grown up anywhere else,” Friedman said in a telephone interview.
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