Gals and dolls

Allison Sheppard didn't much like her chances when she auditioned last August for "The American Girl Revue." The Kaiser Elementary School sixth-grader had never taken a singing, dancing or acting lesson ? what's worse, she was up against Disney.

"There were four callbacks and I had no idea I was going to make it, with all these kids who had been in 'The Lion King,'" Allison, 11, said.

Every time the casting director called, however, Allison's hopes rose a little. Finally, she got the news that she had made the final cut. Her resume, which included eight Kaiser school plays but no trace of a Broadway dressing room, got a little more distinguished. In April, the Grove shopping center in Los Angeles will open the newest American Girl Place, a nationwide chain store that sells dolls and doll accessories. The store, which also has sites in Chicago and New York, puts on a 75-minute musical several times during the week, with rotating casts of girls acting out the lives of the doll characters. The show is set to open in Los Angeles on April 22.

Allison, who is in the fourth rotating cast, got a key role in the production ? or, to be precise, three of them. In the show, girls sit around in a circle and talk about their dolls, then act out stories involving the characters. Allison's character, Katie, owns a pair of dolls named Kirsten and Kit, the former a 19th-century Swedish immigrant and the latter a girl living during the Great Depression.

If not for Kaiser Elementary's theater program ? and a very persuasive teacher ? Allison might never have thought to audition. At one point she wanted to be a marine biologist, but when she first entered a school production in the third grade, she got hooked on the stage. Teacher Liz Slezak, who oversees Kaiser's plays, encouraged her to stick with it. "This school really pays attention to the arts," said Allison's mother, Lori Sheppard, who is also the Kaiser librarian. "When the school play came around this year, about 600 kids took applications."

In "The American Girl Revue," Allison gets to sing a pair of songs ? "It's the Same Sun" and "If Life Gives You a Lemon" ? but she's already had a little practice performing. Last year she won the "Kaiser Idol" competition for the fifth grade, beating a group of contenders with her rendition of "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" from "Oklahoma!"

After leaving Kaiser this year, Allison intends to stay with music and theater: She recently auditioned for the Orange County High School of the Arts and expects to get the results in April. Her contract with the American Girl Place lasts for one year ? or, as her mother put it, "until she doesn't look like a little girl anymore."

Although Allison said she didn't play with dolls before joining the production, she found that learning about her characters complements her studies at Kaiser.

"It's teaching history in a fun way," she said. "This year, when we were going over the Great Depression, I learned so much more about Kit from what we did in school."dpt.31-allison-CPhotoInfoB01PG2SP20060331iwytl6knKENT TREPTOW / DAILY PILOT(LA)Allison Sheppard, 11, performs in a musical at the American Girl Place store at the Grove shopping center in Los Angeles.