Sydney Morton

Sydney Morton, a 2004 graduate of Sycamore Community City’s Sycamore High School, credits a tough teacher with providing the push she needed to shine all the way to Broadway. “Ms. Leslie Knotts, the former director of the theater department at Sycamore High School, really stands out for me for as having such a profound effect on my life, and on the lives of so many of my classmates,” Morton said. “Ms. Knotts was not the type to coddle. She was often gruff, with a dry sense of humor, and she expected a lot out of us ... but what she may have lacked in bedside manner, she more than made up for in devotion to her students. “She spent her evenings at the school running rehearsals and her weekends helping us build our sets … but most importantly, she showed us that we could be taken seriously, no matter that we were teenagers. She expected a lot from us, and we rose to the challenge.” During high school, Morton danced in the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music Preparatory Department, more than eight professional productions with the Cincinnati Ballet and many concerts with the Cincinnati Studio Cloggers and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, including a performance at Carnegie Hall. Sydney went on to graduate from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Arts in musical theater. After moving to New York City, Sydney was in the original Broadway casts of “Memphis,” “Evita” and “Motown” and is currently performing in the new Broadway show “American Psycho.” She also performed in the Chicago company of “Jersey Boys” and “High School Musical” at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse and starred in “Flashdance” on tour. You can see her in various TV and film appearances, including NBC‘s “The Sound of Music Live”; “The Intern”; the hit Netflix series “Jessica Jones”; indie films “Love,” “New York” and “Emoticon;)”; and numerous commercials. Her mother, Mary Woode Morton, and father, Stan Morton, still live in the Cincinnati area. Her brother, Will Morton, works in Seattle for Microsoft on the popular video game “Halo.” In addition to her performing career, Sydney contributes to a lifestyle blog and writes and directs comedy videos, many of which can be viewed at sydneymorton.com. In 2015, she became a small business owner through skin care products company Arbonne and currently lives in Manhattan with her dog, George Balanchine. “I was able to participate in a multitude of artistic programs during my days (in Cincinnati) and I could attend events, concerts, and museums in my down time. I saw professional artistry at a world-class level, and never once did I understand the stereotype of the small Midwestern town. I know that the culture I was exposed to in Cincinnati made my transition to big city life fairly easy for a girl from Ohio.”