Reminder: Lamb's Players Pro Needs Your Vote!

Update 5:45 a.m. Thursday March 7: Voting closes today, so read on to go to Facebook and choose Kelsey Venter in the Smash contest!

Kelsey Venter is already a star in the eyes of La Mesa's Helix Charter High— a 2002 graduate with a powerful voice and dozens of acting credits.

But her own star could rise beyond her hometown and Coronado – where she's performing as part of the Lamb's Players Theatre production of Guys and Dolls – with the help of online voters in a promotion by the NBC series Smash.

It's almost over though: Polling closes Thursday in the race between nine talented young women in a local singing contest. Click Vote to choose Venter’s performance here, singing Let Me Be Your Star from the TV show. 

“Honestly, I'm just thrilled that I was asked to be a part of it!” Venter said. “The winner of the contest gets two tickets to New York to see the [La Jolla] Playhouse’s production of Peter and the Starcatchers, and gets to sing at the La Jolla Playhouse’s Gala next week, both very exciting opportunities.”

Venter notes that “everyone can vote once a day, not just once” from now until Thursday.

Venter says she hopes the contest will help “get my name and face and voice out there, so that I can keep on doing what I love to do.”

As if she hasn’t won recognition enough.

She won a 2010 Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for her musical performance in She Loves Me. And she won raves for her role of Mama Who in The Old Globe’s recent production of The Grinch.

“I am proud to say that right now I am a full-time actress,” she writes via email. “I know how rare it is to be able to work in theater and not have to have a day job, so it's a very exciting thing.”

Venter recently lived in Northern California, where she was a part-time actress and had a job at a boutique pet shop south of Berkeley.

“It was a great place to work,” she says. “I sold a lot of doggie hiking boots and very fashionable canine sweaters. Not to mention getting to give treats and kisses to the dogs that came in the store. I can’t think of a better day job.”

Now 27, the San Diego State graduate with a masters in fine arts from the American Conservatory Theater says she’s in a little bit of transition.

“For now, I’m back in San Diego working in theater. I came down from the Bay Area (where I’d been living since 2006) last July for a vacation, and ended up booking theater work that has kept me here since then.”

In fact, she's sharing the stage in Guys and Dolls with a former classmate, Tim Roberts.

“Tim plays Nicely Nicely Johnson, and I play Sgt. Sarah Brown, the same roles we played 10 years ago at Helix, when the Highland Players did Guys and Dolls. It's been really fun getting to work with Tim again, especially on such a great piece.”

She credits a teacher of hers, Gregg Osborn, with being 
“without a doubt, my most influential/favorite teacher.”

And if she—like the fictional cast of Smash—ever makes it to Broadway, she has Osborn to thank.

“He continues to be one of the most important mentors I have,” Venter writes,  “and I can honestly say I would not be where I am today without him. He’s in my Tony speech.”