When Lauren Kennedy reminisces about one particular musical she did in high school, she has to laugh. “I was 17 years old, playing Dolly Levi — which really was typecasting, wasn’t it?” she adds in a mocking voice.

Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it was typecasting, for Lauren Kennedy has turned out to be quite the matchmaker. Right now, she’s matching up people who buy theater music with the new artists who write it. Hence, her new album Here and Now offers no Lloyd Webber, Boublil and Schonberg, or Rodgers and Hammerstein — all of whom she’s sung in major Broadway or London productions — but David Kirshenbaum, Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich.

“These writers need to be heard more,” says the strikingly attractive blonde. “People must open up their ears and eyes to them, because they’re the future of Broadway — the Broadway that I see and want to be a part of. As much as I love and respect and have learned from the classics, I want our time to have its own classics, too.”

The idea for the album began shortly after Kennedy finished her run as the Lady of the Lake in Monty Python’s Spamalot on Halloween, 2006. “I sat around thinking, ‘What now?,” she says. “When I thought about doing another CD, I thought about asking all the talented new writers to write something new for me. Then I thought, no — these people have already so many good songs. Some are in projects that haven’t seen the light of day — yet — and some are in shows that may never get on. So let’s get them heard.” (In other words, Kennedy asked herself not what these writers could do for her, but what she could do for these writers.)

So the album starts with a rousing rendition of “Here I Am” from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels — and though that song’s not exactly a household name hit, it turns out to be the best-known ditty on the disc. “Spread a Little Joy” is an Andrew Lippa song that he wrote for a proposed Betty Boop musical. (When Kennedy sings, “I’m a little girl who knows how,” you’ll find yourself nodding in agreement.)

You only heard Kennedy sing “In This Room” if you attended Jason Robert Brown’s wedding in October, 2003 — though you had a few more opportunities to hear Brown’s “Mr. Hopalong Heartbreak” if you caught Urban Cowboy. Whether it’s Jeff Blumenkrantz and Libby Saines’ “I’m Free,” or Georgia Stitt’s “My Lifelong Love,” you’ll be impressed by Kennedy’s Merman-like ability to hold a note or a sultriness that permeates the tender lyrics.

Kennedy also does “Pretending That I’m Somebody Else,” which she performed in The Rhythm Club during its Washington run, and “Easy” from Waiting for the Moon, in which she played Zelda Fitzgerald during the Marlton, New Jersey stint. “Tommy Krasker,” she says, citing her PS Classics producer, “recommended a song from I Love You Because. What’s nice is that the writers, Joshua Salzman and Ryan Cunningham, wrote another A and B section to make it more universal.” So some writers did pen something just-for-her after all.

Lauren Kennedy was born in Raleigh to an electrical engineer father and a mother who was a teacher. Ah, but her parents did community theater, too. Kennedy fondly remembers the Mame where her father played Ralph Devine (the head of the Laboratory of Life school), and her mother was in the ensemble. “So I got into Broadway music at an early age,” she says. “My parents or grandparents would take the whole family to New York every year just to see shows.”

But it was the nearby North Carolina Theater that Broadway vet Terrence Mann ran that changed Kennedy’s life. “When I was just in high school, I was working with New York actors,” she says. “Beth Leavel — who’s from Raleigh — came back to do Funny Girl and Hello, Dolly! I was in the ensemble, and saw people who were living the life, making a living, and seeing it was possible. There was really no alternative for me to do anything else.”

Along the way, she heard from many cast members that the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Carnegie-Mellon, and NYU were the places to go. She auditioned for Cincinnati first, and within two weeks was accepted, so she didn’t even try for the other schools.

Nevertheless, she was never graduated, because, on a whim, she auditioned for the new Broadway musical Sunset Boulevard — and was offered an ensemble role. “I hated to leave school,” she says, “but Trevor Nunn, Glenn Close, and Judy Kuhn? I had to do it.”

Actually, someone else in the cast would make the greatest impression. Her first day of rehearsal, she saw Alan Campbell, and just one look, that’s all it took. “I was 20, and he was not,” she says diplomatically. “We were both in relationships, but we became friends right away and felt there was something there. But it was two years before we ... followed through,” she adds euphemistically. They’ve now been married for married for eight years, and have a three-and-a-half year old daughter named Riley. “She prefers the Dixie Chicks to me,” Kennedy mourns. “Though when I was part of a program recently at Barnes & Noble, she told me afterwards that I was the best singer there.”

But Campbell wasn’t the only Sunset staff member to command her attention. “Trevor Nunn is an amazing director because he can see how actors need to work, and finds a specific way to get through to them. With him, one size does not fit all. He’d also talk to all of us about our characters, and made us all feel so integral that you felt you began to feel that you were the reason this show was happening. Not until halfway into the run did you realize you’re standing somewhere in the dark on the back of the stage — because he’d made you to seem so important at the beginning.”

Kennedy wasn’t always in the back or in the dark. Because she understudied Alice Ripley, she got to go on as Betty on two occasions. Her next understudy stint, though, would have her do the part more than 30 times: When she covered Emily Skinner as Daisy Hilton in Side Show, which had her rubbing elbows — literally — with Ripley.

She’d rub elbows with plenty more people while dying on the barricade of Les Miserables, towards the end of its mammoth run. “I was Fantine, too,” she admits, “but playing the boy on the barricade was my favorite part. It gave me a ridiculous creative freedom, because women never get to be in battles, do they? Do you know we all gave ourselves names for that scene? I was Changement, which is a ballet term for feet changing position. It seemed apt, because I was changing from woman to a man.”

The CCM-Sunset conflict wouldn’t be only professional one Kennedy would have. While doing Jason Robert Brown’s The Last 5 Years in Skokie, Illinois, Trevor Nunn tabbed her as his Nellie Forbush in a London South Pacific. “I’d fallen in love with Jason’s music, as much as kids in the ‘60s did with the Beatles, but at that point, there weren’t any real New York dates for The Last 5 Years, so I took South Pacific. I told Jason, ‘I don’t expect you to wait for me, but I have to go. I had a lot of sadness, because I was really connected with the piece. I told him, ‘I really don’t want to stop singing your music, so may I do an album of your work?” They recorded five songs before she left for London, and eight months later when she returned, did the other six.

Sounds as if she’s had a charmed life, doesn’t it? And while Kennedy has done very well for herself, there have been disappointments. Had all gone as planned, Kennedy would have opened this week at the Belasco as Agnes Ford in Lone Star Love — “in the role that Beth Leavel had on Broadway,” she says, relishing the irony. But the best-laid plans of Quaids and men prevented that from happening. “We weren’t able to do any changes, fixes or cuts,” she says. “The show ran two hours and 40 minutes, which, for a comedy, is too long. We had plans to cut 30 minutes, but because of creative differences, we weren’t able to do that.”

She shrugs. “A long run in a show is nice for obvious reasons,” she says. “But I love the creative process even more, so at least I got that out of Lone Star Love.” Besides, all shows close sometime, but Here and Now will last Now and Forever.