Celebrating the lady who sang the blues

The Boston singer/actress/playwright stars in Lanie Robertson’s “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill,’’ which starts previews tonight at the Lyric Stage Company, directed by producing artistic director Spiro Veloudos.

“It’s what every single actor wishes they had the opportunity to do . . . just being able to fully embody a person that haunts us across the board on every level,’’ Parker says. “Just a soul that’s so deep, you hear a story every time you play one of her songs.’’

“Lady Day’’ finds Parker playing Holiday (1915-1959) a few months before the end of her life, onstage in a club, singing and telling stories about her life. A hard life it was, including rape, child prostitution, heroin addiction, domestic violence, and prison. But from those materials she created an unmatched vocal style and even co-wrote a few classics, notably “God Bless the Child.’’

“I think art is what saved her life, even though ultimately she was consumed by it. Art is the thing that probably kept Billie alive. I think she would have been gone years before if she did not have art,’’ says Parker. “When she stepped to a mike, that’s when she was most alive.’’

Hard living also coarsened her voice in her later years, though many think it also increased the intimacy of her expression. But Parker says the show tries to capture all of her.

“You’re taking a journey. She tells these stories, so sometimes when she sings, there is that memory of what her voice once was, and it gets deeper and more coarse as the show progresses,’’ she says. “But we’re not playing this gloom and doom. Her last recording wasn’t great, but there were things in it she did that were amazing. No one wants to see a show where every moment is sad and tragic.’’

That wouldn’t be true to Holiday, anyway. In her research, Parker found that jazz greats who played with Holiday, like Artie Shaw, all said she was very funny, which comes through in “Lady Day.’’

“When Billie talks about these tragic things you’re reading about her life and you find sad, that’s not how she saw it all,’’ said Parker. “She’d take a story about some man trying to whup her ass the night before, and [when] she’d tell it, she turned around and beat his ass.’’

The other challenge, of course, is the singing. Parker sang some of Holiday’s songs with a band in the 1990s. But she calls herself a “belter,’’ and modulating her instrument for the show has required a lot of work with musical director Chauncey Moore, who plays Holiday’s onstage pianist.

“I have no interest, nor does Spiro, in mimicking her. That would be the worst tragedy,’’ Parker says. “I think my performance is more a celebration, her telling her story. No one’s ever going to sing like Billie Holiday, know what I mean? So I’m singing with my voice and finding the story, the heart of the songs.’’

Parker asked for Moore, with whom she had worked before, in the African American Theatre Festival, which Parker runs.

“I really need someone I felt safe with, someone I trusted completely, musically, because as an actor I just want to be free to do whatever Billie would do in a particular moment onstage,’’ Parker says.

Fresh from a playwriting fellowship with the Huntington Theatre Company, she hopes to spend part of the year developing a piece that had a reading there, “Jeanie Don’t Sing No Mo’,’’ about an extraordinary blues singer who experiences a tragedy that changes her life.

But meanwhile, there’s one very pleasant part of playing Holiday she looks forward to.

“I do have a beautiful gown. That’s one thing about Billie: Even when she sang a few months before she collapsed, she would walk out on that stage and have a beautiful gown,’’ Parker says. Costume designer Mallory Frers is creating a cream satin dress for her.

“It’s beautiful,’’ Parker says, a little dreamily. And Holiday’s trademark flower will be in her hair: “I will have that gardenia.’’

Running through April 24. Tickets: $29-$54. 617-585-5678, www.lyricstage.com