(Radio Iowa) – An Iowa-born actress, writer, teacher and director with more than five decades of stage experience is starring in the title role of a touring Broadway production that will make a one-week stop in Iowa next week. Sioux City native Ann Morrison, who’s 70, is very up-front about her age and says it’s a thrill to play the lead in “Kimberly Akimbo,” which won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical.

“The show is about a 15-year-old turning 16 during the course of the play, who has a rare genetic disease that causes her to age four or five years every year. So even though she’s turning 16, she’s actually in the body of a 70-year-old. And that would be me,” Morrison says, laughing. “I am, by spirit, a 16-year-old in a 70-year-old body, so I usually just jokingly say, I just have to show up.”

In an era when so much emphasis on stage and screen is placed on young blondes, Morrison says she’s neither, and it’s a spectacular change of pace to be playing this part — at this level — as a septuagenarian. “It’s interesting because some people say they think I am a 16-year-old with older makeup on. Of course, when I’m on stage, you can’t tell, you don’t see the lines in my face,” she says. “So some people think I am young and they’re shocked when I say, no, I’m really 70.”

Over her accomplished career, Morrison has performed multiple roles on Broadway, Off-Broadway and London’s West End. She says her love of the theatre started early when she was growing up in Sioux City. “My dad was a professor at Morningside College and my mother also was an adjunct teacher there and they created a musical theater,” she says. “This is back in 1950s and 60s because I’m 70 years old and I lived on campus.”

Following in her parents’ footsteps, Morrison now runs her own theatre company, SaraSolo Productions, that’s focused on young actors. “I’ve started this company to help people develop their own solo theater, that means standing on stage by yourself and creating story, but in a theatrical way,” Morrison says. “And so we go into performing arts high schools, and I work with 16-year-olds. So my Kimberly for me is a conglomeration of all the 16-year-olds that I adore so much.”

Morrison says the show is “full of heart at a time when we really need some heart.” The musical “Kimberly Akimbo” is playing at the Des Moines Civic Center, with eight shows next Tuesday through Sunday.

civiccenter.org
https://www.sarasolo.org/