“Still, I love him. I’ll forgive him. I’ll go with him, wherever he goes.”

That’s the refrain that faithful-to-a-fault Kathleen Lafferty cries for her wandering husband, Charlie, at his wake in a quaint pub in Ballyslattery, Ireland. Kensington resident Michelle Pauls, who plays this doting wife, echoes it as the mantra to her acting craft.

Pauls stars in the musical farce, “Lafferty’s Wake,” currently headlining the Society Hill Playhouse (507 S. 8th Street), scheduled on Friday and Saturday nights, with Sunday matinees—except for Easter Sunday—through April 12th.

The play is held in an intimate setting in the Playhouse’s Red Room Cabaret. There, audience members come to honor the dearly departed Charlie Lafferty. Charlie’s family, priest and, of course, his bartender regale the “mourners” with hilarious stories from his adventurous, debaucherous—and possibly duplicitous—past.

More of a party than a funeral, some audience members even get picked by the actors for roles of prominent family members and citizens of the small, Irish town. All guests are also asked to take part in the traditional Irish folk songs that are sung throughout the evening.

“What I like best about the production is interacting with the audience,” said Pauls, whose improv experience comes to task during the performance. “One actor picks out an audience member from the stage to be a character, and all the other actors have to remember which character that member is for the rest of the play.”

Pauls said there’s a lot of thinking on the fly from performance to performance but that’s the fun of the show that both cast and audience share. When rehearsing, the cast would pretend to call on people in the empty seats, unable to truly prepare for how the real people would respond on the spot.

“Then, when it came time to perform, the whole thing just opened up,” Pauls said.

No stranger to improv, Pauls became involved with the play when her husband, Stan Heleva, was hired by the Playhouse as facilities manager and she was cast in another play in the fall of 2014. It was when theater owner Deen Kogan told her that she’d be—ahem—”reviving” “Lafferty’s Wake,” that Pauls jumped at the chance to play the deceased title character’s loving, yet naïve widow.

Pauls encourages anyone who just wants a good time to come.

“It’s not deep, it’s not sad,” she said. “It’s fun and it’s funny. The audience gets to be part of the creative process, and in keeping with the Irish wake tradition, there’s a bar available the entire show!”

Pauls and Heleva actually own their own small theater right in the neighborhood, called The Walking Fish Theatre. They purchased the building at 2509 Frankford Ave., nine years ago, converting a former flophouse into an artful establishment. “It was a wreck,” Pauls said. “We cut through layers of wallpaper and drywall, and even horsehair used for insulation, down to the exposed brick walls.”

It’s that transformation that’s made a suitable location for the couple to run acting classes for adults and children on weekends, rent out as a venue, and even host the occasional co-production.“My husband’s a playwright,” Pauls said. “We did a lot of his work out of our theater; stuff that was edgy.”

Sadly, The Walking Fish has had to scale back some of its operation in recent years due to lack of interest in theater in the neighborhood.

Although Pauls sees the influx of young professionals and “artsy people” to area as encouraging, she and Heleva still face adversity in running The Walking Fish Theatre.

“Theater appreciation has to be more of a community focus to thrive in the neighborhood,” she said. “Not just buying tickets, but volunteering, fundraising and board development. I feel like there will be more interest as business keeps moving [north] on Frankford Ave.”

As arts and entertainment continues its slow trickle further into the community, Pauls and Heleva will reap the rewards of their gamble.

“When we opened here, people told us we were crazy,” Pauls said. “We were pioneers. But we wanted a place where we could do our own work … and hopefully, we will keep doing it moving forward.”

There is good news for those who can’t turn out to see Pauls onstage, or learn from her directly in her acting class: You’ll soon be able to see her acting chops on cable in the locally-made indie feature, “Deadly Gamble.”

Written and directed by South Jersey filmmaker Mario Cerrito, the thriller features Pauls prominently as Sue, the cancer-stricken mother of leading role Andrew Cain, a degenerate gambler struggling to overcome his demons. Sue Cain, like Kathleen Lafferty, is devoted to her loved one. She loans him money to get back on his feet, which Andrew immediately uses to gamble his way into a dangerous debt with the Russian mafia.

It was Pauls’ attitude off-camera, as much as her superb acting, that won over Cerrito.

“Michelle is great,” Cerrito said. “You have to pick people you feel will be team players. She was very supportive of the process and a great influence on the other actors.”

Cerrito hopes to work with Pauls again after capturing her brilliant performance. “Michelle is very emotional and she lived her character,” he said. “She absorbed it into her being past the takes, and she trusted the writing and direction.”

“Deadly Gamble” will be released on cable on Tuesday, March 24, and will be available OnDemand on Comcast, Verizon FiOS, Cox Communications and Dish Network.

Ever the working actress, Pauls continues to plan her next moves after the play and the film. She and husband Stan are shopping scripts to playhouses around town that she could act in and he could direct. She also hopes to tailor her act to connect with special audiences—specifically senior citizens, the infirm, and to special needs children along the autism spectrum—through theater and performance.

“I want to use acting to make a difference,” Pauls said. “I want to positively influence as many people as possible, and to leave them feeling enriched and empowered.”

Thus, as with Kathleen Lafferty’s devotion to her husband and Sue Cain’s devotion to her son, Michelle Pauls’ devotion to her craft marches on.

“Theatre is a harsh mistress, but we keep coming back,” she said. “There’s an invisible attraction that keeps people committed. I couldn’t imagine giving it up.”