Even after 50 years as an actor, Ann Morrison still gets the jitters.
“Every night, I stand behind the curtain before it’s raised and think, ‘Why am I doing this?’” Ann said.
“Oh, yeah, I remember now. It’s the audience,” Ann said. “I’m doing it for them, and they’re going to have a good time because I’m having a good time.”
Ann is currently wondering why she’s doing this behind stage curtains across the country. She’s starring in the touring edition of the Broadway hit Kimberly Akimbo, which comes to Straz’s Morsani Hall, Nov. 18-23.
Ann plays Kimberly, 15 going on 16, who’s dealing with a new high school, a dysfunctional family and a condition that causes her to age at an accelerated rate, which is why Ann, 70, can play a teenager.
“I don’t really have to act. I just have to show up because I am 16 at heart,” Ann said with a laugh.
Actually, Ann spends quite a bit of her time with teens, working with them in her SaraSolo Productions theater company, “so I’m very versed in 16,” she said.
SaraSolo Productions is focused on “unique, brave and uplifting solo performances that illuminate the human condition, according to its website. SaraSolo is based in Sarasota, which Ann has called home since the ’90s.
SaraSolo works with teens and young actors to create one-person shows, “comedies, autobiographical pieces, biographical pieces, monologues,” Ann said.
Teens think they don’t have a voice, Ann said. “They don’t think anyone cares about what they have to say.”
SaraSolo is a way of countering that thinking.
“Once they get over that fear that they’re going to be all by themselves on stage and allow themselves to be vulnerable, they mature very quickly” she said.
For all her credits, Ann may be best known for her role in one of Broadway’s most famous flops. She made her Broadway debut in 1981 in the role of Mary in Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince’s Merrily We Roll Along. The musical closed after 16 performances, taken down by the one-two punch of bad reviews and bad word of mouth. Ann’s experience is recounted in her solo piece Merrily From Center Stage.
“It talks about when I was 25, doing a Broadway show with my musical theater gods who became my mentors, Steven Sondheim and Hal Prince,” Ann said.
Merrily was revived in 2023 and became a hit, but the show’s initial lack of success caused a (later healed) rift between Sondheim and Prince. Ann, though, took positive lessons from her experience.
“One of the things I learned from that experience came from watching my musical theater gods fail and pick themselves back up again and continue,” Ann said. “That was a great lesson. You just keep moving forward.”