LA PALMA : Singer-Dancer Doing Time as Understudy

What would an 18-year-old runner-up in the Miss La Palma Pageant do in mid-town Manhattan for the first time?

If you are Roxanne Taga, you land a role in the Broadway production of “Miss Saigon,” move into a studio apartment near Times Square and delay your entrance into college by a year.

The singer and dancer has spent the past six months living alone and performing nightly shows on the Broadway stage.

She plays a non-speaking part as a prostitute for now, but is also the understudy to the title role of Kim, a Vietnamese woman who becomes “Miss Saigon” and falls in love with a U.S. soldier during wartime.

Taga hopes to follow in the footsteps of two other actresses of Filipino descent--Tony award-winning Lea Salonga and Leila Florentino--who have portrayed the role of Kim to critical acclaim.

Last week, Taga was given an official city proclamation from the mayor and City Council of La Palma.

Taga took to the stage for the first time after only one audition and one intense week of rehearsal.

“I was very nervous knowing that I was on Broadway,” she said Friday while on a one-week vacation to visit her parents and two brothers.

The nervousness and novelty has worn off, and performing on Broadway is like any other job, she said: “I do my best every night, even when I am sick. I am not a rich superstar.”

Her good fortune is no fluke.

She has been dancing and singing since she was 4, and has compiled a long list of accolades: student body president, homecoming queen, Kennedy High’s best singer three years straight, a finalist on television’s “Star Search Junior,” and an appearance on “Punky Brewster,” not to mention a host of roles in Orange County stage performances.

“I have been involved in dancing my whole life. I have always been in the spotlight,” she said. “If my parents didn’t push me, I would not be here.”

Her father, Ernest Taga, 53, went to New York with her last summer to help her find a place to live after she signed a contract to join the ensemble cast of “Miss Saigon.”

He was shocked to see his daughter appear on stage scantily clad.

“He would only say that the show was good,” she said, adding that he declined to critique his daughter’s performance.

Despite that, Roxanne’s father and mother, Roxanna, are proud of their daughter.

“I went out there with her to New York for a month. I observed her very closely, and she never showed any signs of being lonely,” Ernest Taga said.

Roxanne Taga is planning to visit with friends this weekend before flying back to New York on Sunday.

“I am very lucky to be in the situation I am now,” she said.