The year started out rough for Lisa Rodrigues.

Able to say only two words, she had to go on trial in a murder case. That same night, she was luring in johns on Central Avenue as a rhyming lady of the night.

However, once the curtain went down and the house lights came up, Rodrigues’ world returned to normal. The Tracy teacher earned huzzahs and a Tracy Performing Arts Foundation Stellar Award for Outstanding Actress for her performance in “An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein,” at the Grand Theatre Center for the Arts.

The play, performed January through April, was a series of nine quirky, warped vignettes from the famed author and cartoonist. Rodrigues, 51, said taking on some of the roles in the performance was pretty difficult.

“I had to completely move out of my comfort zone,” she said. “I had to find something in my own life that I could use to give me that kind of emotion and reaction that it required.”

“An Adult Evening,” was only Rodrigues’ second performance since high school. Late last year, she played Clairee Belcher, a sassy Southern belle, in “Steel Magnolias.”

After she got that first hint of the stage, though, she was hooked.

Rodrigues incorporates acting into her day job as a first-grade teacher for Hirsch Elementary. Her kids act out sentences and stories with dramatic gestures, and she teaches them basic fundamentals of art, too.

“My love and my passion is infusing the arts into my curriculum,” she said. “The arts are, in and of themselves, valuable subjects to study. They’re not just things to keep kids occupied.”

Rodrigues always loved acting as a young woman, but after a while, her family took priority. She heard about the auditions for “Steel Magnolias” through a friend and decided to give it a shot, since her two kids were grown.

Growing up a rather shy girl, she started acting at Vacaville High School as a way to break out of her shell, earning the title role in “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

“It’s a way to try someone else’s life out,” Rodrigues said. “It’s a way to work out problems, too. See how someone else would’ve done it in a different time or a different place.”

Rodrigues’ resurgence as an actress has helped her through some tough times, too. Her husband, Robert Rodrigues, died six years ago after a spending time in a coma after complications from a heart attack. She said she tries to keep his memory alive however she can, and getting back to her life’s passion has helped.

“I think he would’ve found it very amusing and probably would’ve said something like, ‘That figures,’” Rodrigues said about her performance earlier this year.

• In the Spotlight is a weekly profile in Our Town. To nominate someone or to comment on this story, contact Our Town Editor Justin Lafferty at jlafferty@tracypress.com. Meet Lisa Rodrigues

• Age: 51

• How long in Tracy: 25 years

• Born: Portland, Ore.

• Education: Vacaville High School; bachelor’s degree, National University in Stockton

• Occupation: First-grade teacher at Hirsch Elementary School

• Family: Children, Nathan, 21, and Hannah, 17