IT SCARED HER SO : Her Role in ‘Superstar’ Has Given Syreeta Wright ‘a Whole New Life’

“OOOhh, I was sooooo scared,” Syreeta Wright shrieks, recalling the first time she played Mary Magdalene in “Jesus Christ Superstar,” last October in Buffalo, N.Y. “I was so scared I can’t remember doing it. It’s a blank now. I really didn’t think I was going to make it through another night.”

She did, of course. Since that attack of the opening-night jitters, she has been singing the role about eight times a week in the national touring company of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, which is at the Orange County Performing Arts Center through Sunday. She is featured on several songs, including the well-known “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.”

Still, that first night had to have been nerve-racking. “It was,” as she puts it, “the opening night of a whole new life”--which may sound melodramatic (actually, Wright is a bubbly, outspoken chatterbox who makes everything sound melodramatic). But it’s nonetheless true.

Not only was it her first theatrical role ever, it was the first time she had sung professionally since the early ‘80s. Back then she’d been in the final stages of her career as an R&B; singer-songwriter at Motown, where she was best known for her work with Stevie Wonder.

Returning to the world of music seemed like a logical step. A recent divorce had left her “emotionally drained, and I always felt I had been born to sing. I missed it badly. I wasn’t sure how to get back into it, but I never thought it would be through theater.”

She has her pal Carl Anderson to thank for the opportunity. Anderson, who plays Judas in the show, alerted her to auditions for the role of Mary Magdalene. “I never thought I’d get it,” Wright recalls. “It’s very different, in terms of breathing and technique, from the kind of pop singing I’d done. But I taught myself how to do it and got the job.”

Born in Pittsburgh, Wright grew up in a suburb of Detroit, started out singing jazz, and switched to R&B; when she got a shot to record for Motown in 1968. She turned out to be one of those “budding superstars” who never got past the budding stage, never scoring a hit of her own.

“I had some wonderful years at Motown, but I was also frustrated and unhappy,” she says. “I never did what I wanted to do. I was always butting heads with the executives about my career.” She also was butting heads with Wonder, to whom she was married briefly in the early ‘70s.

She had her biggest successes collaborating with him, helping to write his hit “Signed, Sealed and Delivered” and working on songs for his “Where I’m Coming From” and “Music of My Mind” albums. He, in turn, co-wrote and produced her “Stevie Wonder Presents Syreeta” album in 1974. “Of my six albums, that was the best,” she recalls wistfully. “What’s funny is that we were going through a divorce while we were making it. It wasn’t a very happy time. But I’m friends with him now.”

Her final album with Motown was ‘Spell,” produced in 1983 by Jermaine Jackson. “I didn’t like the way it turned out,” she says. Her harsh summary of her Motown years: “It was like a bad marriage. You have to know when it’s not going to work and call it quits. But I was young and dumb. I should have broken away from Motown years before I left but I didn’t have enough sense to do that.”

Ten years later, though, she’s raring to plunge back into the biz.

“I haven’t been doing a lot of writing, but that’s about to change. I’m going to buy a little keyboard for the road so I can start writing regularly again. Then I’ll start making demos and looking for a record deal.”

What about the theater?

“I’ll probably be with this show until February. I’d consider another show if it was the right show and I didn’t have to travel too much. I’ll have to wait until this show is finished before I figure out my next step.”

Where and When

What: “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

When: 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, June 23 and 24; 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday, June 25; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday, June 26.

Where: The Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.

Whereabouts: San Diego (405) Freeway to Bristol Avenue exit north; turn right onto Town Center Drive.

Wherewithal: $19-$45.

Where to call: (714) 740-2000.