As president of the South Orange Performing Arts Center, there are few areas Barbara Stoller views as off-limits and few things she won’t do to help the endeavor succeed. One morning last month, she rose at 5 a.m. to “station storm” — pass out brochures publicizing the Nov. 3 opening of SOPAC to commuters at a train station in a nearby town.

As president of New Jersey’s latest major arts institution, Stoller is not afraid to get her hands dirty, make tough decisions, or criticize things she’s not sure she likes.

At SOPAC, she’s been involved with everything from interior design and purchasing furniture to managing the center’s relationship with the village and hiring executive director Jessica Finkelberg.

“I don’t like to be idle,” she said, by way of explanation. No kidding. Stoller is also president of Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel, a Reform synagogue in South Orange, where she lives.

She acknowledged the intense time commitment both roles demand, but said it still doesn’t compare to her life as an attorney with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. She worked 80-hour weeks at the Manhattan firm until she left shortly after moving to South Orange in 1989, when her third child was an infant. (She worked at a Morristown firm, largely on a part-time basis, until she finally phased out practicing law entirely in 2000.)

SOPAC, tucked behind the South Orange train station, is intended to be the crowning touch on a rejuvenation of the downtown that began a decade ago with Midtown Direct, providing commuter-train service to midtown Manhattan.

The new complex is barely visible from South Orange Avenue, the town’s main thoroughfare. But turn a corner, and its brushed steel face soars into the sky. A grand staircase winds up through the middle of the building, separating the performance space from a five-screen movie theater, rented out and managed by Clearview Cinemas.

The building houses a 415-seat performance hall, a loft space available for rental, offices, and a workshop area. In November and December, it will feature a lineup heavy on music, including jazz, blues, and a big helping of family fare. Stoller’s vision for SOPAC? “Hip, a little edgy, but not too far out,” she said. “We want to stay within everyone’s comfort zone.”

Sitting in the loft space at SOPAC, framed by a magnificent view of the foliage on South Mountain Avenue, Stoller, 54, discussed the drive that helped see the building from blueprint to reality.

“I love my temple, I love being Jewish, and I love the theater,” she said. “One year ago during a major capital campaign at the synagogue, 30 hours a week at the synagogue was not unusual. I haven’t hit 30 hours here, but I may,” she said. Still, she never considered saying no to either position.

Having worked her way “up through the ranks” at her synagogue, her current role there was “not unanticipated,” she said. But SOPAC was a different story. Although she had read an article saying the organization was looking for people to join the board beginning in 2002, she opted not to submit a resume. “I thought I’d wait and see. I thought it was a great idea, but I didn’t know how serious it would be. I had a lot of questions.” In the end, the town came to her.

She had the credentials they wanted, she said. A tough-minded attorney, she also had theater bona fides, including a master’s degree in theater from Northwestern University and a series of acting credits including soap operas and children’s theater.

Her passion for theater began as a girl growing up in Rahway. “My parents took me to the theater in New York City. I loved musicals, and I loved escaping through acting in high school.”

She continued with a dual major in theater and psychology from Mount Holyoke College, and then pursued her dream after graduating. “I wanted to be Colleen Dewhurst,” she said. Instead, she did children’s theater in South Carolina and then she kept getting cast on soap operas. She was a candy striper and a hostess at a restaurant and performed in a party scene on One Life To Live. Although she enjoyed the residual checks that came with the flashbacks to that party scene on the soap, she said, “That was not what I was looking for.” So after three years, she left the theater for law school and never looked back. “It was a very good decision, and I had a very satisfying career.”
Two of her three children have been bit by the theater bug. One is about to graduate from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and landed a casting internship with the Public Theater. The other is now applying to Tisch. (The third, the middle child, who, Stoller said, was long “the front runner,” having performed at the Paper Mill Playhouse, is now pursuing a degree in economics and Chinese.)

As for Stoller’s role in Jewish life, her childhood home was around the corner from her synagogue, Temple Beth Torah, a Conservative congregation that has since merged with Temple Beth O’r to become Temple Beth O’r/Beth Torah in Clark. Although she went to religious school there and attended services every Shabbat, she said, her real Jewish journey began as a grownup when she found Sharey Tefilo-Israel.

“I’m more observant as a Reform Jew than I ever was as a Conservative Jew.” To her, that means, “I try to live my life in a Jewish way — healing the world, being a good person.” She lights candles every Friday night, finds Torah study “intellectually interesting and compelling,” and receives the Reform movement’s “Ten Minutes of Torah” on her e-mail each day.

Her interests rarely conflict and seldom overlap. One has the sense that that is due in no small part to her own careful planning and dogged sense of commitment. But she enjoys when her two passions collide happily, like the year Sharey Tefilo-Israel put on a production of Candles in our Window, a play based on the 1993 events in Billings, Mont., in which, after a rock was thrown through a window in which a Hanukka menora was displayed, thousands of townspeople put drawings of menoras in their windows in an act of solidarity with the Jewish community. Stoller said she is also looking forward to the performance of The Western Wind’s Chanukah Story at SOPAC on Dec. 17.

One set of performances she will not attend, however, are those that fall on Friday nights. Friday nights, she said, are reserved for kabalat Shabbat services.

With a little more than a week to go before the SOPAC opening, Stoller was attending to last-minute challenges. Most recently, she made the difficult decision not to allow construction crews to redesign the plaza in front of SOPAC as was planned. “We can’t open with a mudpit in front,” she said. “It was a big decision, but we’re stopping here.” As it was, the movie theaters opened while the cement on some parts of the plaza was not quite dry.

Still, Stoller’s blue eyes began to sparkle as she anticipated opening night.

“I can’t wait to open the door, to hear everyone saying this was worth waiting for,” she said.