What a wonderful way to start 2003! I had the opportunity to interview the bubbly, cheerful Ann Morrison, whom I first met when she appeared as Anna in The King and I at Glenbard East High School in Lombard, Illinois, where I am a teacher. Since graduating from good old G.E.H.S., Ann has had a varied career that began with her Broadway debut in Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along, directed by Hal Prince for which she won the 1982 Theatre World Award. Then she starred in the musical Peg in London. Off-Broadway she was an original member of Forbidden Broadway and received a Drama Desk Award nomination for playing Lizzie in the musical Goblin Market.

A resident of Sarasota, Florida, for the past eleven years, Ann has won several critics awards for performances at the Asolo Theatre Company. She is currently directing Kaleidoscope Theatre Company's road shows with persons of developmental disabilities, a program she co-founded. She is also performing her one-woman show based on Celtic Mythology and storytelling. After the recent 20th celebration/aniversary of Merrily We Roll Along , I had the opportunity to catch up with her before her son, Huck Walton, was scheduled to appear in a high school production of Into the Woods.

Charlie Eichler:  You just returned from New York City?

Ann Morrison:  I just got back and lost my voice while I was there. No voice, no power. I went there for a reading for the new Sondheim/ Hal Prince show, Gold. Originally it was Wise Guys. There's a lot of politics going on there that you can find out elsewise. Hal Prince is directing the show and it's going to premiere in Chicago this coming spring.

It's so interesting. When we closed Merrily abruptly in 1981, Hal and Steve broke up their relationship. They were like musical theatre gods. We were so devastated. So at the concert that happened in September, everything that happened in 1981 went into reversal - one was to see Stephen and Hal hug. The fantasies that you play out in your head ... now there was a reality!

CE:  After high school, what did you do? As an instructor, I always knew you would make it somewhere in the theatrical world.

AM:  The opportunities at high school were great. I decided to go to the Boston Conservatory of Music. My dad was a music professor ... a kind of combination Danny Kaye and Victor Borge. Mom taught modern dance and movement for the theatre and they often collaborated. I was dragged into theatre, whether I liked it or not! After being a "faculty brat" all those years, I had no interest in college whatsoever. I wanted education, but not in that way. Then I went to San Francisco and then back to Chicago. But I finally geared myself up for the Herbert Berghoff Studio in New York and loved it. I was working with professional people in class and doing "the do," but they called it "the brush-up." Unfortunately, I got involved with a Korean family while back in Chicago and fell in love with the youngest son. So I went on the road for two years singing with this Korean family. There's a whole chapter in my life called, "Anna and the King of Korea."

CE:  How did you make it to Broadway?

AM:  Well, I left the Benny King Show because I didn't want to become a Korean housewife. I wanted to be an apprentice at the Burt Reynolds Theatre in Florida because I knew if you wanted to learn about politics, you couldn't do it in school. I did some television, but I absolutely abhor television. I try to get people to turn their television off!

I went to the Burt Reynolds Theatre and auditioned. At our showcase/ graduation performance, Dinah Shore came down and Burt told her, "That girl will be on Broadway within a year." I left the Burt Reynolds Theatre and went to New York. It was the right place at the right time. I got my first Off-Broadway show within a month which led to my first regional job in Rochester, New York ... an odd show called Keystone. People told me that I should audition for Merrily We Roll Along, then Ron Field, the choreographer, came up and said 'you should be our Mary Flynn.'

CE:  What happened with Merrily?

AM:  People started feeling negative about the whole thing and we thought it was our fault.

CE:  I saw your picture in the Sondheim book in the part that discusses Merrily .

AM:  Oh, I don't look like that anymore. Today I am absolutely gorgeous!!

After Merrily Jason Alexander and I went off to join Forbidden Broadway in the first replacement cast. From there, I got an audition for Peg (based on the play Peg O' My Heart). Christine Ebersole, two others and myself were flown to London for the auditions. It was so weird. We all roomed together. Eventually I got the part and I was in England for eight months. At that time that was the longest American contracted. I established a new precedent. When I cam back there was nothing exciting to do in new York, so I said to my husband Blake, now is the time to have a kid! So that brought on the entrance of Huck.

CE:  That didn't stop you from performing, did it?

AM:  No. I auditioned for a little showcase called Goblin Market , and it became a big hit. Both Terri Klausner and I wanted to do this little showcase and it became this smash. In fact, Frank Rich came down to see the show and every time he saw a Broadway show after that, he said, "It isn't anything like Goblin Market." So we moved to an off-Broadway theatre. Very "artsy-fartsy" or not. You either liked it or you didn't.

I love creating new works. After that I began auditioning new works and I soon realized that only those with television credits were getting the parts ... I had to have television credits in order to work in theatre.

So we bundled ourselves up and I was invited to appear in the L.A. revival of Anyone Can Whistle, a terrible book but exceptional music. It was hard. Arthur Laurents would not let you change one word. We were miserable - I do not like L.A. and I do not like television. I think the words "I Hate Television" are written across my forehead. It is not a theatre town. I was miserable. My marriage was beginning to break up. And my son, who was five said, "Mommy? Why is it when people say what they're going to be, they never are?" That question changed my life. I realized I had been doing my career for everybody else, but not myself.

For me, theatre has to have some purpose. I didn't want to raise Huck alone in New York. So I called my mom (my parents are still living ... a regal duo), explained the situation and she said, "You are going to do what all of the women in our family do and move back home."

She put me in a house in Sarasota, Florida, which used to be my grandmother's house. This location has allowed me to pursue all kinds of theatrical things, especially one-woman shows. I created my pride and joy, a musical theatre workshop for persons with developmental disabilities ... Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy, persons with profound mental disabilities. It taught me how the brain works, because you have to learn how these people function when different parts of their brain are shut down. They are my favorite people on this planet. I no longer want to be around people with normalities no more!

We now do a road show because I want these people to graduate into something. However, I want to move from Sarasota and am looking for a replacement. I want to start this program (Kaleidoscope) elsewhere. When I went to Ann Arbor to speak to the students at the University of Michigan, three girls came up to me after my class and said they want to be part of the project.

CE:  Ann, you are wonderful, generous person!

AM:  Thank you. Here's my new passion. I have been joking about for years ... why is it that theatre, especially musical theatre, is only geared toward Christians and Jews? What about Druids? I finally got fed up with monotheism. They fight all the time, they don't seem to get along, they have Holy Wars. I said to myself, I don't like those people. So I started looking at nature-based religions, because our planet is a mess. I am a big Joseph Campbell fan, and he said we need some new mythology. We're still sticking with old mythology that does not work for our cosmos today.

So I started to look at the native American tradition which is a nature base religion to see what was there and evolve it for us now. I remember working with a terminally-ill patient when I was in L.A. and he said, "Why don't you look into your own traditions? You're a Celt. Why don't you look at the Druids?" He helped me work through their theories. I have a hard time telling people about this, but I believe I used to see faeries when I was a little kid.

CE:  Did you have this feeling about Druidry when you were back in high school?

AM:  Absolutely. I was always trying to explore this esoteric bizarre stuff. I was "Goth", before there was "Goth"! Remember back in school when I used to wear black dresses with this upside-down cross? Now I've become the Sarasota Druid!

CE:  I'm not surprised, knowing your versatility.

AM:  Wait until you hear this. I sing at all the churches here in Sarasota, and I would even sing in a mosque if we had one, though mosques don't usually let women come and sing. At one particular church, this minister, an ex-nun, asked me to come and sing and she loved me. She wanted me to come and do musical theatre for them. One day she told me she was going to New York and she asked me to take over her sermon for her. She said to do something theatrical. I told her I had this one-woman show about Celtic Mythology and Druidry. The theme is about following your dreams, inspiration, etc. I thought, what a fun thing to do.

CE:  And you continued with this?

AM:  I've created my own show and continue performing this creation based on Celtic Mythology and storytelling. It's great.

CE:  What a varied career you've had. Tell me what you think about the future of Broadway theatre.

AM:  I'm kind of like Stephen Sondheim. I don't care too much for Broadway right now. Only because it used to be geared for the theatregoer and then it changed. Now it goes straight for the tourist. The really good theatre is not happening on Broadway. Every now and then you will get a gem, but off-Broadway and regional theatre is really very good.

You know, the mecca for theatre is New York and the mecca for film is L.A. That size economy does not work anymore. We need to expand differently, and I see this as a good thing. I see that theatre has taken a shift. I have to tell you this ... when I did Merrily back in 1981 I felt that Broadway theatre is community theatre with a lot of money. It's the same silliness, the same politics. It's just amazing.

You have to decide where your passion is and I've created my own. In the future, I may be doing my own Druid piece. When I did the church things it was like a stage piece with people coming for autographs afterwards, etc. I was the minister for the day and people want to counsel with me. They want to talk to me about changing their lives.

CE:  A sidetrack ... I know you are so proud of your son, Huck. What is he up to?

AM:  He was such a hyperactive young person but now he has grown into the most amazing kid. Very talented. He met Stephen Sondheim at the Merrily concert. Steve is extremely shy ... especially with women. He doesn't know what to make of me! Huck was shaking in his boots to meet him. I brought the pictures of the cast for Huck's Into the Woods for Hal and Stephen to see. They said glowingly, "This is a high school production?"

Huck is coming to Columbia College in Chicago to study after graduation. He loves to write poetry, but in classic style. He's a composer as well. I helped him put together a home studio in his bedroom.I know he will have some link to theatre. Like me, if it wasn't for theatre, I don't know how I would have survived school.

CE:  Ann, I love you. You have come a long, diversified way since Glenbard East High School.

AM:  I love you, too. Come down in the Spring and see my second Druid piece.

See the schedule of theatre productions in the Chicago area

-- Charles