Getting Up Close With Technology

Cabaret and computers? Tunes and technology? Can these seemingly unlikely pairings ever make a happy combination?

Singer-actor Kate Peters thinks so. And she makes her case tonight with a program titled “Sojourn: A Concert for a New Age” in Founders Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

“There’s a tendency,” said Peters, “to think that technology can make us lose our connection with each other. And the world of music and art has been especially victimized by that thought. So our show is based on the idea that you not only don’t have to lose that connection, but that you can further it by actually using technology.”

The notion of “using technology” in a cabaret performance may sound strange to aficionados of the intimate theater art, but Peters is convinced that she is on the right path.

“We don’t sacrifice any of the traditional cabaret elements,” the Yorba Linda resident said. “One of the techniques we use is lots of funny monologues and stories talking about how computers and technology both help us and get in our way. Stories about, for example, what it’s like to get stuck in some site on the Internet and not be able to get out of it. It’s a performance that addresses, with music and humor, how we interact with technology in our lives.”

It’s also a performance that, despite its technological associations, follows the familiar cabaret performer’s path of inner exploration.

“ ‘Sojourn,’ ” explained Peters, “actually means ‘resting place on a journey.’ So I see it as a portion of my life, concentrating on a time when I’ve had a lot of challenges and made a lot of changes.

“I talk a bit about divorce, about raising children, about being involved in the contemporary world of relationships,” she said. “More than anything else, I’d say, it’s the image of a moment in a woman’s life. And it just happens to be my life.”

The presentation’s technological focus is underscored by the use of a big-screen video projection. The images are sometimes used as background, sometimes to engulf Peters as she stands in front of the screen.

“The proposal we’re making with this combination of elements,” she said, “is that technology can be demystified and that if we use it to further the connections with each other, it will help us to experience richer and fuller lives.”

The images employed in the video projections for “Sojourn” trace to a CD-ROM she’s made exploring, in considerably greater detail, much of the material included in her cabaret act. It is available, fittingly enough, through Peters’ Web site--www.KatePeters.com--and includes a number of areas filled with text, video and music illustrating Peters’ career, background information illuminating her fascination with cabaret, clips of performances by other young cabaret artists, and an interactive story section that links to her online Web site.

Peters, who declines to reveal her age, has had preparation for her offbeat approach to cabaret. The Fullerton native graduated from Sunny Hills High School, earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Pitzer College in Claremont and her master’s in music from Cal State Fullerton. She was a violinist before she became a singer and has landed leading roles in regional theater productions of “Zorba,” “Brigadoon,” “Carousel,” “Oklahoma,” “A Little Night Music” and numerous others.

She also has sung with the Pacific Symphony, the Irvine Symphony and the Orange Coast Chorale and has sung Susanna in Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” and Musetta in Puccini’s “La Boheme.” In addition, she has been an active proponent of avant-garde classical music, with more than 40 debut performances of new music to her credit.

Peters’ husband and partner, Doug Simao, is president of Data Into Action Inc. a Fullerton-based computer firm, and an active participant in her quest to bring technology and the arts together.

The two oldest children in their blended family, both coincidentally named Katharine, participate in Peters’ cabaret performance.

And, for the Founders’ Hall date, veteran singer Margaret Whiting will join Peters for a number--a further friends-and-family connection, since Whiting’s husband, director-actor-writer Jack Wrangler, collaborated with Peters on the script for “Sojourn.”

“Actually, all of this simply underscores what the show is really all about,” said Peters. “It’s about connections, and not only about making connections, but about not losing connections.

“It’s about making a blending of the concept of cabaret, which is so much about connection and heart, with technology,” she said, “which is really just another way--if it’s used meaningfully--of making a connection.”

* Kate Peters sings tonight in Founders Hall, Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 8 p.m. $32. (714) 740-7878.