Anissa Felix ’13 knew New York. Her parents had grown up there. Her grandmother still lived there. She was 9 the first time she watched a Broadway show. A few years later, she was learning to navigate the city. But it was not until she traveled there as a UMW student for a 10-day marathon of theatre and interviews with actors that she believed she’d someday end up on a Broadway stage. She did – as a swing in Motown: The Musical – less than two years later. As a college student, Felix had traveled to the city as part of an extraordinary UMW course that has connected theatre students with New York theatre professionals since 1994. It was during that class’s 2012 spring break trip that Felix met Natalie Joy Johnson ’00, who’d climbed her way from Klein Theatre to Broadway. “Some kids dream of being astronauts and the president. My dream was to be an actor,” said Felix, who grew up in Manassas, Virginia. That ambition was as old as her memory; before she was performing in her … [Read more...]