Jean Birkett says she's "a local girl who didn't make good," but come on. She means that she stayed in Richland Center. But that's not really true, either.

Just last summer, Birkett, 82, and a friend, Nancy Keegan, went to New York City and got themselves front-row tickets on Broadway to see Angela Lansbury in "Blithe Spirit," the Noel Coward revival for which Lansbury won a Tony.

"It was thrilling," Birkett said.

All the more so because some four decades earlier, in the Richland Center Municipal Auditorium, Birkett had directed Keegan in "Blithe Spirit."

That kind of connection - threading together history, Richland Center and the theater - is not uncommon in Birkett's rich and varied life.

She has taught English, written books, traveled and raised a family. But through it all, the theater has always been there, and so, too, has Richland Center. Just a couple of weeks ago Birkett came to Madison to attend a performance of "Little Women" - the same play she acted in while attending high school in Richland Center 65 years ago.

It makes her current project altogether appropriate. Birkett is a key member of the Richland County Performing Arts Council, which is raising money to renovate and revitalize the 96-year-old Richland Center Municipal Auditorium.

Birkett, typically, said credit for the group's early success - they recently scored a $400,000 grant from the Jeffris Family Foundation in Janesville, provided they can raise twice that on their own by June 2012 - should go to other, younger members of the council.

"These people are incredible," Birkett said.

She continued: "They're all young, except me. I'm window dressing. When they get depressed, and wonder if we can really do this, they come to my house and have chicken and dumplings."

Reading, writing, language - they're in Birkett's blood. Her family owned the local grocery in Richland Center and her mom taught English. So, eventually, did Jean; Jean's sister, the late Marian Kanable, had a distinguished career as an English teacher at Madison West High School; and now Jean's daughter is an English teacher, too.

"It's kind of a disease in our family," she said.

Birkett's first job out of UW-Madison, where she majored in English with a minor in theater, was teaching high school English in Waupun. That was 1949, 60 years ago.

Birkett decided to put on a play - her first as a director - and while Waupun appeared ready for "Arsenic and Old Lace," it was not quite ready for one line in the play delivered by a character who was a detective.

"What the hell's going on here?" he said at one point.

Opening night, the high school principal found Birkett and said, "Jean, he can't say that."

Birkett took the line out. "I had to," she recalled. "I needed that job."

She has directed dozens of plays since - somewhere around 50 - many of them at the auditorium in Richland Center, where Birkett and her husband returned in the '50s to raise their three children.

Birkett's connection to the auditorium could hardly be stronger. She helped form a theater group, Community Players, in the '60s and in 1973 took over the drama department at UW-Richland Center, where Birkett taught and directed plays for 17 years.

"The campus gave me a wonderful life," she said.

The current council to renovate the auditorium formed in 2006, amid speculation that the building might be razed for a parking lot. They've made improvements, including a furnace, and the building now has three tenants, which helps pay the bills.

In 2007, Birkett directed a production of "A Christmas Carol," in the theater, which still had - and has - a long way to go before it is truly restored.

Still, the excitement of being back in the auditorium was palpable. "We're not just restoring the splendor of this old building," one patron wrote the council, "we're restoring community."

Thursday night, the group met again at Birkett's house. They brainstormed, and no one, it seems safe to say, was more engaged than the hostess.

"I think," she said, "that you make up life as you go along."

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