Like the character she plays in the DCPA Theatre Company’s “A Little Night Music,” Sophia Dotson is a young woman on the cusp.

As Stephen Sondheim’s opulent musical builds to its melancholy climax, a reflective grandmother asks her precocious granddaughter what it’s all for – this thing called life.

“Well, I think it must be worth it,” Dotson says as Fredrika. “And why is that?” she is asked.

“It’s all there is, isn’t it?” the girl says. “I know it’s often discouraging, and to hope for something too much is childish — because what you want so rarely happens.”

It is, without giving away any of the story, one of the most meaningful lines in the play, which is essentially a game of romantic musical chairs based on the 1955 Ingmar Bergman film “Smiles of a Summer Night.” It is a preternaturally mature message of managed expectations.

And they are words you might just as easily hear from Dotson herself as she enters her senior year at Grandview High School in Aurora on the unknowable precipice of what life has in store for her.

Off-stage, Dotson is a self-proclaimed introvert. She’s modest about her achievements and humbly grateful for every opportunity that has come her way so far. She’s not the type “to hope for something too much” because she knows absolutely nothing is owed to her.

But take it from one of her own directors: “Believe me, wherever Sophia wants to go, Sophia is going to get there,” says Kelly Van Oosbree, who directed Dotson in the very same musical in the very same role with Cherry Creek Theatre back in 2019.

And where Dotson is going is to the moon. That’s not boasting — that’s just paying attention. Dotson, Van Oosbree agrees, is a bona-fide can’t-miss kid.

The youngest of three accomplished sisters has been performing since she was 6. “My mom sort of forced me to do theater because my sisters loved it, and she knew I would love it, too,” Dotson says with a laugh. “But I cried before my first class, because I didn’t want to go.”

To anyone who knows the Dotson family — Mom Laura, Dad Kyle, and older sisters Hannah and Grace — this story is hilarious because they know that Sophia was so happy after that first class “that I literally haven’t stopped doing it since,” she says. Her very first role was playing no less than Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” for a former children’s theater called CYT Denver.

Fast forward to 2017, when 11-year-old Sophia was cast by Miners Alley Playhouse to star in the first-ever Denver-area staging of “Fun Home,” the first Broadway musical ever to feature a lesbian protagonist — and the 2015 Tony Award winner for Best Musical. Dotson played the youngest of three versions of the lead character, an enormous acting and vocal challenge. Dotson’s fierce and vulnerable delivery of a song called “Ring of Keys,” about a young girl getting the very first inkling of her sexuality, propelled Dotson to become the youngest winner of a Colorado Theatre Guild Henry Award in history when she emerged from a field of eight nominees to earn Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Musical. Dotson brought “a beautiful honesty and simplicity” to the role, wrote former Westword critic Juliet Wittman.

“That is so crazy to me,” Dotson says of her historic award. “Even now, it just doesn’t feel real. I mean I was nominated against so many people that I continue to look up to. I really do think it’s a lot to live up to.”

She lived up to it this past summer when she auditioned for a big-time Broadway Workshop production of “Mean Girls Jr.” in New York City. That is considered to be the country’s top training ground for young actors. Dotson was cast way against type — as the meanest of the Mean Girls, Regina George. She was happy to get the part, then became quickly (and characteristically) concerned about what the other kids might think of her.

“I was kind of scared because no one there knew me. I was like, ‘I hope you don’t think I’m mean in real life.’ So, I made sure to be extra nice off stage,” she says with a laugh.

To Dotson, it was a lot of fun. To her director, it was a harbinger.

“Sophia has the incredible ability to bring what is special about her and put it into her work on stage,” says Marc Tumminelli, owner and director of Broadway Workshop. “She is the kind of young performer that you know will have a huge stage career.”

YouTube (naturally) offers plenty of video evidence of Dotson singing from “Mean Girls.” And in the internet land of prevailing toxic sludge, Dotson’s rendition of the song “I’d Rather Be Me” (actually sung by Janis Ian in the musical) is miraculously lined with nothing but flowers of word praise.

“Another dynamic performance from this ridiculously talented kid,” one commenter says. “It’s still unclear to me how she’s not (won a Tony Award) yet. If I were a Broadway producer, I’d be fighting to get her on my stage.”

Which brings her to that inevitable teenage collision with the calendar: Dotson’s high-school graduation next spring. Dotson will be following in the footsteps of many powerhouse women who have gone from Colorado to considerable careers on the national stage and screen, including Sierra Boggess, Annaleigh Ashford, Melissa Benoist, Elizabeth Welch and Beth Malone (who starred in the original Broadway production of “Fun Home”). Each took very different paths to Broadway, and Dotson is forging her own way, as well.

But with apologies to Fredrika, Dotson knows exactly what she wants, and there’s nothing childish about how she is setting out to achieve it — because what she is hoping for is already waiting right in front of her. So, after graduation, she’s not heading to college — she’s heading to New York City. She already has representation there, and a sister to help ease her transition.

“I have known for a very long time that this is the thing that makes me the most happy,” she says. “That’s why I just want to go do it right now while I can.”

Dotson is reminded of her lifelong calling every night when she heads to the Denver Performing Arts Complex, the largest of its kind in the country, to perform in her Denver Center debut. The same place where she first saw a national touring production of “Wicked” at age 6 and knew, just as certain as she is today, that her life will be on a stage. (Preferably, she says, a good chunk of that in the Broadway production of “Hadestown.”)

“I’ve been driving down Speer Boulevard past the Denver Center for so long, seeing those posters and being reminded, ‘That is what the big professional actors are doing,’” she says. “I have to say, seeing the poster for the show that I’m in now up there on that same wall for the first time was very powerful. I was like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe I get to be part of this.’”

“A Little Night Music” is best-known for the iconic (if enigmatic) Sondheim classic “Send in the Clowns.” Dotson pinches herself performing alongside Broadway veterans including Soara-Joye Ross and Edward Staudenmayer, as well as local legends like Jennifer DeDominici. “This cast is insane,” Dotson says. “I have been so starstruck by everyone. Their voices are so good, the set is amazing and the costumes are incredible. You can’t understand how good this show is until you come see it.”

What’s impossible for Dotson to process is that other people just might be starstruck by her. (A video of her performance at a benefit cabaret for The Denver Actors Fund in 2022 has been viewed more than 25,000 times.) She is sharing the role of Fredrika with Sydney D’Angelo, a seventh-grader who is just getting started on the path Dotson joined 11 years ago. Along the way, Dotson has had significant roles at the Arvada Center (“Sunday in the Park with George”), the Aurora Fox (“Caroline … or Change”) and Vintage Theatre’s “Tuck Everlasting,” which earned her a 2019 True West Award.

“Just how can Sophia Dotson be so damn good at 13?” Wittman wrote after her performance (as no less than a boyhood version of playwright Tony Kushner) in “Caroline … or Change.”

D’Angelo, one day, will no doubt be asking the same questions about her future that Dotson has now asked and answered. What advice might she give her?

“Honestly, I think a lot of young people my age are not necessarily doing it because they love doing it,” Dotson says. “I think you have to remember this is a career that you have to love. It can’t be about competition or being told you are better than everyone else, because it’s just so subjective. So, you have to continuously remind yourself that you are doing it for the right reasons.”

Spoken like the wise and quietly observant Fredrika.

There will be bumps along Dotson’s way — what good story does not? But when they come, Dotson would do well to remind herself of the immortal words of one of the other not-so-mean girls, Cady Heron:

“The limit does not exist.”

Send in the clowns? Don’t bother. Sophia is already here.

‘I have known for a very long time that this is the thing that makes me the most happy. That’s why I just want to go do it right now while I can.’ – Sophia Dotson

Sophia Dotson’s remaining performances

• Sunday, Sept 17: 1:30 p.m
• Tuesday, Sept 19: 7 p.m.
• Thursday, Sept 21: 7 p.m.
• Saturday, Sept 23: 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Wednesday, Sept 27: 10:30 a.m. and 7 p.m.
• Friday, Sept 29: 7 p.m.
• Sunday, Oct 1: 1:30 p.m.
• Wednesday, Oct 4: 7 p.m.
• Friday, Oct 6: 7 p.m.
• Sunday, Oct 8: 1:30 p.m.
• Info: 303-983-4100 or denvercenter.org