Downingtown’s Mary Kate Morrissey went from Broadway to the golf course after her run as Elphaba from ‘Wicked’

Mary Kate Morrissey spent most of her life trying to excel at one thing: musical theater.

However, while growing up in Downingtown, Morrissey was surrounded by athletics. Her mom, Mary Beth, played basketball at Mount St. Mary’s University and her sister, Tara, played Division II lacrosse at West Chester. Her dad, John, wanted his children to play golf, so he signed them up for golf camp one summer and gave them tiny sets with panda head covers.

Morrissey, though, wasn’t interested. She remembers sitting on top of a hill at a golf camp, hearing a production of West Side Story being performed down the street.

“I was livid,” Morrissey said. “I couldn’t believe that I had to be outside when I could be inside doing musical theater. So that was the end of that, and I swore off all things sports until I graduated college.”

Instead, she immersed herself in all things arts.

“Anytime you go full throttle into one thing, there’s not a whole lot of time for anything else and so I really focused on theater, singing, band, just straight arts,” she said.

That focus eventually led her to Broadway. Morrissey worked her way to being a standby for Elphaba on the national tour of Wicked from 2015 to 2017. She said she went from having about $300 to her name to becoming the principal Elphaba on tour.

She later became the Broadway standby from 2023-24, before taking over as the principal Elphaba on Broadway from 2024-25. The role was a dream she had chased since she saw her first Broadway show, The Lion King, at 10 years old and stood in Times Square telling herself she would be there one day.

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Elphaba’s story of being a misfit resonated with Morrissey, who described herself growing up as the “weird art geek.”

“I felt like I was her,” she said. “I had really bad skin and so all this stuff about her not wanting to be seen in her own skin and I was like that’s me. I always wanted to play the part, but I never actually thought I would.”

Morrissey had hoped for a faster path to Broadway, but now believes her debut came at the exact right time.

Morrissey became the principal Elphaba during the same year Wicked the movie starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, was released. The popularity surrounding the film brought new audiences to the Gershwin Theatre in Manhattan, N.Y.

“Everybody expected me, myself included, to be the very best of the best,” Morrissey said. “I felt so much pressure because there were so many first time Wicked viewers coming to Broadway because they had seen the movie or because they wanted to see it before the movie came out. I felt this massive responsibility to just be as dialed into my performing as possible that I really needed somewhere where I could just go be bad at something and try to learn something new.”

And that’s how golf reentered her life.

Morrissey, now 37, has combined her passion for musical theater with her newfound love of golf to show audiences that sometimes it’s good to be a beginner and try something entirely new.

“If you’re always working on that thing that you’re best at, it’s really good to flex the muscle of ‘I’m also not good at this other thing’ for our egos and to stay humble and to truly build character,” Morrissey said.

Storytelling and singing was always a part of Morrissey’s life.

Her father’s side of the family immigrated to South Philadelphia from Ireland. John’s father sang locally in Philadelphia speakeasies, corner bars in Southwest Philadelphia, and on the Irish radio.

Whenever the Morrissey family had parties, the night would end with a “sing-song.”

“You’d say Mary Kate give us a song and she would be 5 years old and she would belt out some Irish song about the Irish famines and she’d sing it and sit down,” Mary Beth said. “There was never any fear of performance for any one of our children.

“She came out of the womb singing and has never stopped.”

Mary Beth loved “Godspell,” written by Stephen Schwartz, who also wrote the music for Wicked, and Morrissey remembers listening to the cassette tape in the car. John also used to take her and her siblings to plays and musicals at the Academy of Music and Walnut Street Theatre.

When Morrissey returned to Philadelphia in 2019 to perform as Janis Sarkisian in “Mean Girls” at the Academy of Music, she brought both of her grandmothers backstage.

“The academy is this crazy, big, beautiful, old theater, so just to bring them on stage, they were over the moon,” she said. “It was one of the coolest things to come back to Philly and do that.”

Morrissey’s return to golf started with her mom after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mary Beth retired from Liberty Property Trust in 2020 and began playing golf. She loved it, she said, and Mary Kate enjoyed watching her mom become immersed in a new sport.

“It was fun to see her being plugged into a community where it’s all surrounded by this hobby where you get to walk and be competitive and have a cocktail after,” she said.

So during her run as Elphaba on Broadway, Morrissey decided she wanted to try it herself.

She convinced a nearby golf simulator, Golf v.2, in Brooklyn to give her free lessons, if she posted about it on Instagram. Once a week, she would take a lesson in silence.

She performed Wicked at night and had to protect her voice during the day, so her golf coach had to figure out how to teach her without speaking.

“I almost learned it like it was a dance move or choreography,” Morrissey said.

The more she played, the more similarities she saw between golf and theater that are often overlooked.

“I feel like both are storytelling venues,” she said. “With golf, each golfer is the hero of their story, each course is the setting, the sand traps are the villain, how are they going to overcome their obstacles, everything is a beginning, middle, and an end. They’re faced with conflict. It’s the same thing with theater.”

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Both golf and theater require calm under pressure, while demanding preparation, repetition, and the ability to find something new in something familiar, she said.

“Broadway actors do the same show every single day, and they find something new in it every single day,” she said. “In golf you could play the same course every single day and find something new in it.”

Morrissey and her friend were at the beach when they started talking about the lack of golf media they wanted to watch, especially for women and beginners.

“We were like let’s think of five big ideas that we can make happen in the next year and Broadway to Birdie started,” Morrissey said.

In November 2025, she started “Broadway to Birdie” on YouTube, bringing Broadway performers who aren’t golfers together to show you don’t need to be an expert to enjoy the sport.

The series has featured Broadway veterans, including McKenzie Kurtz, who played Glinda in Wicked, Anna in Frozen, and Heather Chandler in Heathers, as well as Brian d’Arcy James, who was the original Shrek in Shrek the musical and King George in Hamilton.

The performers play a friendly best ball match and whoever loses each hole has to sing from the losing green to the next tee box.

“What I’m hoping it does is show other women and people who are not used to seeing themselves on the course in the media,” Morrissey said, “that someone they admire, like a Sam Pauly or Shoshana Bean, can be out there hacking away and just having fun and practicing the beginners mindset.”

She believes that golf can teach the same lessons that theater has taught her throughout her career.

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“Golf is really very character building because it forces you to remain cool, calm, and collected,” she said. “It’s fun to put that kind of exercise on people who build characters for a living and have to sustain that kind of pressure.”

Morrissey has learned many lessons by blending golf and musical theater. She shared that message as a speaker during Women’s Day at Travelers Championship in 2025 and 2026 and the 2026 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship Leadership Summit.

“Golf and theater have become sort of parallel for me, and it’s a story that I really love sharing and love talking about,” she said. “Golf, I think that for so long it’s felt like a closed door and very insider, like a boys club, but it feels to me like that’s changing and sometimes you have to open the door for yourself. I think that theatergoers can find the story and the theater in the tournaments and in the players.”

At the 2026 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, she created a multimedia performance built around past champions Corey Pavin and Retief Goosen. She used clips from their winning championship final rounds and performed a Broadway medley that she sang over the video in front of Pavin and Goosen.

“She has found a nexus where golf and Broadway intersect, and I don’t think anybody has really been able to bring golf and their music or talent together,” her father said. “Mary Kate has found this very special lane, and the joy she is bringing to these other people and bringing into the game as a result of it is just unbelievable.

“The golf community has accepted her and have supported her, as you can see from the way her Instagram account is growing.”

Every September, Morrissey’s family runs a golf fundraiser at Seaview Golf Club for the Holy Redeemer’s Jersey Shore Food Pantry, which is a charity Nancy, John’s mothers sister, started with the Sisters of the Holy Redeemer over 30 years ago.

The tournament, called the Redeemer Klassic, raises money for the food pantry that serves thousands of individuals each year.

“It all goes back to my aunt and it’s part of her mission,” John said. “We feel like we’re perpetuating her mission of hope to the people of the Jersey Shore who need it.”

The same idea of brining people together through golf is at the heart of Morrissey’s approach. She hopes her journey with golf can show people that it is never too late to pick up the game.

“You don’t have to be a natural athlete, that doesn’t have to be your story,” she said. “I’m an actor, I’m a singer, I’m an artist, but it really helps with balance and confidence. You have to get past the hard beginning part, but it’s good for us to feel like we are bad at something.”

Morrissey believes “Broadway to Birdie” will inspire more women to start playing golf.

“Get out there and try it,” she said. “I’m really just trying to integrate the audiences and making golf more accessible — and making Broadway more accessible, too.”