Staff Photo by Tim Barber/Chattanooga Times Free Press – Brett Cooper, 9, right, rehearses with her vocal coach Jim Boyle at Northside Presbyterian Church.Some children dream of singing with the opera, dancing with a ballet company or acting in a professional troupe when they grow older. Brett Cooper, 9, asked herself, “Why settle for just one?”
“I want to be a triple threat when I grow up, someone who has really perfected her singing, acting and dance,” Brett said. “My mom told me what (a triple threat) was, and I said, ‘Wow, that sounds fun.’ I’ve been practicing really hard ever since she told me that.”
Brett started down the path to triple mastery when she was 3 and started taking ballet lessons while the family was living on Orcas Island, Wash. At yearly intervals, she began studying gymnastics, then acting.
At age 5, she moved to Chattanooga, where she took to the stage for the first time as a bush in Normal Park Museum Magnet’s production of the play “The Little Seed.”
The turning point in Brett’s career, however, was when she and her mother, Diane Cooper, heard the drama department at Girls Preparatory School was looking for munchkins for its production of the musical “The Wiz,” based on “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”