When the curtain finally rises on Drury Lane’s production of “Evita” this weekend, no one will be more excited than the 10-year-old girl who has been waiting two years to make her professional stage debut. The show was originally slated to open in April 2020 but like so many theater productions, it was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For Nina Poulimas, the news was particularly devastating as she had just learned she had been chosen to play the young Eva Peron.
“I was eight when first auditioned for Evita,” said Nina, a fourth-grader at Peterson Elementary School in Naperville. It’s fortunate she is small for her age and hadn’t aged out of the role, she said.
For her audition in Chicago, Nina chose one of her favorite songs, “Hallelujah.”
“I love that song. My singing teacher worked on it with me,” she said.
Nina has been singing and dancing since she was 3 years old. Her mom Sarah says it was her father-in-law who first suggested she pursued her talent.
“At three or four we noticed that she would be dancing around the house. She had an incredible ability to imitate actors on TV,” she said.
“One Thanksgiving my father-in-law said, you have to get her into a dance class. We enrolled her at Steps and she was just begging to join the company. It was a huge commitment and as soon as she signed up, she just lived at the studio.”
Steps, the dance school near Fox Valley Mall in Aurora, has more than 600 students, but Nina stood out from the beginning.
Their artistic director, Rebecca Rosenberg, said: “Nina has been a very natural performer from the time she started dancing with us. She loves performing. She was doing solos from the age of eight and is not intimidated by conversations with adults. She has a huge personality. It’s very clear she has a gift for performing.”
Although Nina loves to dance, she also wants to be a singer and actress, so to she joined Naperville stage school Kidz Kabaret as well. Last Christmas she appeared with them in “Elf the Musical Jr.”
Their founder, Kandiss Hernandez, is not surprised at the success she’s already achieving.
“It is no wonder Drury Lane saw something special in Nina,” she said. “Her poise and professionalism on stage highlights all of her performances. It has been a pleasure to watch her talent grow on the Kidz Kabaret stage.”
Sarah Poulimas is learning what’s it’s like to be a stage mom.
“When I see her on stage, she’s so natural,” she said. “I am a lawyer; my husband is in marketing, so she’s not following in anyone’s footsteps. We all follow her lead, learning as we go.
“I will say she is very independent, focused and passionate. I am her support system; she takes the lead. It’s a lot of hard work and dedication. I sit back and let her do what she loves. It doesn’t seem like a lot of work to her.”
Although “Evita” is Nina’s first professional stage role, she has already appeared on TV. When she landed a part in “Work in Progress” on Showtime in 2019, members of her Steps team sent her congratulatory cards.
“We encourage team members to be supportive,” Rosenberg said. “Success for a member of the team can be a success for all of them.”
Students are planning a joint trip to see her in “Evita,” she said.
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Nina has been rehearsing up to seven hours a day but says it hasn’t impacted her schoolwork because she was on winter break.
“I keep up with my schoolwork,” she said. “I get really nervous before dance competitions but I figure if I fall over onstage, I will just get up again. The nerves go when I get onstage. Onstage I’m just myself.”
Although Nina is playing Peron at the beginning of her life, the structure of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical means she’s on-stage multiple times.
“Young Eva shows up throughout the story,” she said. “She reminds Eva about what she lost and found in childhood. I’m there to remind the audience what happened and remind Eva of good memories. I do have many songs with my father (Sean MacLaughlin), Eva (Michelle Aravena) and the children’s ensemble rather than a solo and I love it.”
Nina can’t wait to step out onto the Drury Lane stage.
“I’m looking forward to being on stage,” she said. “My last memory of Drury Lane was going to see ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ with my preschool. ‘Evita”s an awesome show, which we have in our pockets. To be in the show we all had to have two vaccines and test three times a week, so it feels very safe.”
Nina hopes this won’t be the only time she appears in “Evita.” One of her ambitions is to play the title role on Broadway, but being 10, she would also like to one day play Tom Holland’s girlfriend and be in a movie with Adam Sandler.
“Evita” is playing at Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace through March 20.
Hilary Decent is a freelance journalist who moved from England to Naperville in 2007.