Less than two weeks after Bernadette Peters finished assaying the role of Sally Durant Plummer in a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies,” she will do the only logical thing a person celebrating a successful run at the Kennedy Center could do. She will visit Fort Wayne.

Peters performs Saturday at Embassy Theatre with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic.

Peters says one advantage of headlining concerts over musicals is that she can break character.

“It’s nice because in a regular Broadway show there’s a fourth wall,” Peters says, referring to the imaginary boundary between actors playing characters and audiences wanting to believe in characters. “But here, there isn’t, so I can say whatever I want and sing whatever I want.”

During her Embassy Theatre performance, Peters says she will sing songs by Sondheim, Rodgers and Hammerstein and “Peggy Lee’s ‘Fever’ on the piano.”

One assumes that she means “on the piano” in the most literal sense.

Over the phone, Peters’ voice is a mesmerizing mix of East Coast accent and something cozily reminiscent of Southern drawl. It has both grit and lilt.

Peters’ stature on Broadway these days is such that she has earned the right to be mentioned in the same laudatory breath as Elaine Stritch, Patti Lupone, Carol Channing, Julie Andrews and Ethel Merman.

When she made her Broadway debut at 10 in a 1959 revival of Frank Loesser’s “The Most Happy Fella,” the Queens-born Peters was already an acting veteran.

Her mother secured Peters her first television gig when she was 3.

Peters says her mother’s dreams on her daughter’s behalf became her own dreams when she hit her pre-teen years and her teens.

“You have so many emotions at that time,” she says. “So when you learn that you can find so much expression in song, that you can express yourself through song, it’s fantastic.”

Peters came to prominence in the ’70s starring in light Hollywood fare like “The Jerk,” “Silent Movie” and “Annie” that capitalized on her good looks, extreme adorability and unfailing comic instincts.

But recently Peters has taken on the most difficult roles of her career, including Sally Durant Plummer (a woman who is delusional about love) and Diane (a mother who is delusional about many things including her musical theater past) in the film “Coming Up Roses.”

Peters says playing a character like Durant Plummer requires an actress “to go as deep as (she) can go.”

“The longer you play it, the more you explore, the more comes to mind, the more you learn about yourself,” she says.

“It’s not a place you want live in every day for the rest of your life,” Peters says. “The whole show is about loss and death, and it makes you think about all of that.

“Even though it takes me to dark places,” she says, “I know it’s such a gift to be able to play a character like that.”

Peters says she has never been very calculated about her career. Amazing opportunities tend to present themselves. She doesn’t have to go searching for them.

“It seems like my career keeps being brought to me and I go, ‘That’s exciting. That’s interesting,’ ” she says. “I might try to plan something. But it never seems to work that way.”

“I hate to say ‘life is a journey,’ ” she says. “But I have come to trust in the twists and turns.”

Peters’ recent characters have been women stuck in the past, but Peters says she is nothing like them.

She says she’s also not someone who spends much time polishing her trophies or gauging her position in various pantheons.

“I don’t really think much about any of that,” she says. “What I focus on is being in the moment. Being in the moment is very important in every aspect of life. Whatever project I am doing right now, that is what receives all my attention and all my energy.”

Peters, who will turn 64 on Feb. 28 and who is frequently described as looking 20 years younger, says she doesn’t really mind growing older.

“I am pretty comfortable with anything,” she says. “It’s so funny – I am so in the moment that I don’t look back and I don’t look forward.”

spen@jg.net