After a couple of directors accepted the project and eventually passed on it, Smith asked local actor ("Carousel"), director ("Jackie: An American Life") and Hawaii Opera Theatre educational coordinator Stephanie Curtis Conching if she wanted the job in February. A mere three months before opening night.

"I knew Vanita had a couple of people in line before me, and I didn't mind that at all," remembers Curtis Conching. "I may have taken a night to think about it and doublecheck with my husband, but I still said 'yes' fairly quickly."

With a month until March cast rehearsals, Curtis Conching sunk herself into researching a musical she had never seen performed — on stage or on screen.

"That was a good thing — or maybe bad . . . I don't know," says the ever-candid Curtis Conching, laughing about her lack of familiarity with "Evita." "I knew it was about Eva Peron and was sort of a metaphor for her life and the job that she did in Argentina, but I really had no clue as to even how many people I might need on stage or anything like that." So why the interest?

"I've staged a lot of children's touring productions for (HOT). . . but this was an opportunity for me to do a huge, full-scale musical production in community theater," says Curtis Conching. "I liked the fact the show is a giant metaphor ... there's opportunities to experiment with so many scenes. I figured I had to give it a go."

Conching studied the script, bought a copy of the score and — in a move that might upset "Evita" stage production purists — even "broke down" and checked out a video copy of the movie.

"I had a feeling that the movie wouldn't sway me in any way because it's so cinematic," says Curtis Conching. "What it did was give me some ideas of the types of community for the ensemble — like the ordinary citizens in Eva's life, and the jobs they did."

Curtis Conching ended up keeping faithful to the original Lloyd Webber/Rice Broadway "Evita" production.

Among a few other things, that means that ACT audiences won't be hearing the composers' "You Must Love Me" — specifically written for the movie version in the hopes of winning an Academy Award for best song. The composition scored the film's single Oscar win.

Though not the initial lure that drew her into the director's chair, Curtis Conching eventually grew more and more fond of "Evita's" intensely crowd-pleasing story the deeper she got into her production.

"It's really a wonderful story about this amazing woman who came from nowhere and was able to work her way up to being on equal status with the aristocrats, without ever really being accepted by them," says Curtis Conching. "She assisted so many people that they raised themselves from a poverty level to a middle class that she created, basically. It was this one woman's strength and perseverance that basically allowed them to do that."