Jonelle Allen Tackles a Different Role Actress's Autobiographical Sketch Is Part of Project Aimed at 'Giving Back' to the Community: Ever since she can remember, Jonelle Allen has felt a compulsion to perform. When she auditioned for her first New York show--a revival of "The Wisteria Tree," starring Helen Hayes and Walter Matthau. She was only 5 years old. The director balked at hiring the precocious tot because of her age. But, according to Allen family legend, she piped up Shirley Temple-style: "Gimme a chance! I can do it!" She got a role, of course, and Hayes is said to have told Allen's mother: "Keep this child in the theater--she has a natural gift."

Recounting the storybook anecdote recently during a break in rehearsals for her latest project--a musical sketch about growing up in Harlem, which she'll perform at an art gallery here Sunday--Allen rolls her huge brown eyes and laughs heartily. Even the broad peak of a black baseball cap pulled down low over her forehead can't hide the gleeful animation of her face.

"You just gotta do what you just gotta do," said the actress, lending emphasis to her sense of thralldom with upturned palms and a sharp shrug of her shoulders. "You can take theater anywhere," she added, contrasting the gallery venue with the first-rank theaters she's worked in. "I call this 'storefront elegant.'"

Allen won't be earning any money to speak of by performing "Easter on Sugar Hill," as her sketch is titled. And if the production turns any profit, it won't measure up to anything like the money she's made for many years in television, movies and the theater [where she long ago proved Hayes right with a Tony Award nomination, among other accolades]. Indeed, notwithstanding the $15 price of admission, all the performances by the professional artists in the monthly series, which began in March with Mary Anne McGarry's winning "Honeymoon in Galway," are intended as labors of love.

"Everybody has carte blanche to create what they want," said Allen, who launched the project with actress-writer McGarry and invited the collaboration of musicians Patty Amelotte and Mark Turnbull, dancer-choreographer Mel Jackson and actor Douglas Rowe, the former artistic director of the Laguna Playhouse. "There are some really talented people living in this community. This is a way for them to give something back."

Allen initially conceived of "Sugar Hill," the second in the series, as an Easter piece using music and literature from the Harlem Renaissance of the '20s and '30s. But it soon evolved into a more personal reminiscence. "When I went looking for what I thought I remembered, I discovered it didn't really exist," said Allen, who grew up in the relatively privileged precincts of Harlem's Sugar Hill during the '50s and '60s, "I had idealized what I remembered. "So now the piece talks about me as a child. What I was like up through my teens, what my family was like going back to the Harlem of the '40s. That's why the music and dancing I'm using will be from that period."

McGarry, who has written a text based on Allen's stories, will direct the piece. Jackson, who is choreographing with Allen, will be her dance partner. And Turnbull will provide guitar accompaniment. "We're all putting it together," said the trim, late-30ish actress, who plays considerably younger. "But basically it will be me singing and dancing and telling my tale."

Allen, who noted that her Harlem neighborhood "probably got its name because life was sweet on Sugar Hill," came to Los Angeles in the early '70s with the national touring production of the Tony Award-winning musical "Two Gentlemen From Verona." [Her Tony-nominated performance in Galt MacDermot's 1971 musicalization of the Bard's comedy was a showstopper first with the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park and then on Broadway.]

Allen, who also was in the original cast of the 1967 Broadway production of "Hair" [another MacDermot musical], stayed in Southern California following the Los Angeles run of "Two Gentlemen" because she wanted to work in television and movies. And she has never lacked for roles--landing a lead in "Palmerstown, U.S.A." the Norman Lear/Alex Haley series, as well as featured parts in episodes of "All in the Family," "Cagney & Lacey," "Hill Street Blues" and, two weeks ago, "The Trials of Rosie O'Neill."

She has also starred in all sorts of made-for-TV movies, including "Cage Without a Key" with Susan Dey and "Penalty Phase" with Peter Strauss, as well as the soaps "Berringers" and "Generations." "Lately, I've been going through a whole vixen period," quipped Allen, who moved to Laguna Beach 11 years ago to settle down with British-born restaurateur John Sharpe. [They're divorcing, she said.]

Through all of this activity, however, stage roles have continued to claim her attention. Allen has played in "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf" (1977) at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, "Mail" (1987) at the Pasadena Playhouse, "Etta Jenks" (1988) and "A Burning Beach" (1989) at the defunct Los Angeles Theater Center, where she was an associate artist. Moreover, if not for the fact that she felt "burned out" because of the breakup of her marriage, Allen said, she would have accepted a role offered her in "The Kentucky Cycle," the 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning play that just closed at the Taper. "In fact," she added, "the reason I started this series at the Engman is that when my marriage broke up I was torn between moving back to Los Angeles or staying in Laguna. "Then I realized Laguna is my home. My friends are here. My support is here. The town really has become part of me. There's a sense of neighborhood, and I just want to add my little contribution."

As GENERATIONS' Feisty and high-strong Doreen Jackson, Jonelle Allen was often called upon to give a tour-de-force performance, but on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman-which co-stars Jane Seymour and Joe Lando (ex-Jake Harrison, One Life to Live; ex-Macauley West, Guiding Light)--her portrayal of Grace is more subdued. "Because this series is a Western and it's set in the 1868, I'm not going to be bitching it out on the prairie," Allen laughs, but we have our moments."

Grace isn't completely without spunk. "She is a real pioneer spirit who owns her own business and is married to the town's blacksmith," Allen explains. "They provide a service in town, so the town needs us. Back in the old West, blacks and whites worked together because it was that spirit of people helping each other." While some series tend to gloss over certain historical points, the actress notes that the elements depicted in Dr. Quinn are factual. "History-wise, there were black business people who were very important in building the West," Allen relates. "Some people would say this show is being politically correct, and unfortunately, politically correct has gotten to be a kind of catchphrase that means it's something less than honorable, but that's not true. Politically correct is the fact that it is historically correct, and isn't made up.

Our show is extremely authentic, and that's wonderful. "The series is shot on location in "the beautiful Agoura Hills, in California," Allen relates. "I love going to work because we have one of the best locations, and it is great not to be stuck in a studio all day." One of the benefits of shooting on location is the use of real horses, which are a constant source of surprise and levity. "It's very funny to be in the middle of a dramatic scene, and all of a sudden the horse decides relieve itself," she laughs.

Aside from the humor provided from the setside fauna, Allen appreciates working on location because, "you feel as if time has stood still," Allen says in awe. "It's nature and I think that's what really gets people involved in the show. It's back to what really motivates them: their spirit and souls. It's a time when people are presented with situations and they're into the solutions, not the psycho-babble like today."

Dr. Quinn marks Allen's return to prime-time series work [she was a regular on Berrengers and Palmerstown USA prior to her two years on Generations], and it has given her a new appreciation for daytime. "Generations was my first time doing daytime," Allen recalls, and I gained such respect for people who do it, because you work very, very hard. I had a wonderful time doing daytime, and feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to return to prime time."