Fall arts preview 2023: At 67, actor, singer, musician Victor Morris says he’s busier than ever

For most performing artists, reaching the age when they qualify for Medicare isn’t usually the zenith point of their careers.

But not Victor Morris. The 67-year-old La Mesa-based actor, musician and singer says he’s just getting warmed up.

In the coming months, Morris will travel to more than a dozen San Diego County locations in the cast of the Old Globe’s annual Globe for All production of “The Comedy of Errors!” He will return to his featured role as Victor in New Village Arts Theatre’s third-annual production of “1222 Oceanfront: A Black Family Christmas.” And he’ll perform in the chorus of San Diego Opera’s winter productions of “Madama Butterfly” and “Don Giovanni.”

He also just wrapped filming scenes for a movie in Arizona, and in his spare time, he’s studying the title roles in Richard Wagner’s epic operas “Lohengrin” and “Siegfried,” just in case someone’s looking for a mature tenor to sing two of the longest and most challenging roles in all of opera.

“I’m living my best life right now,” Morris said. “I’m working more now than I ever have.”

Since relocating to San Diego from the Seattle-Tacoma area in 2010, Morris has become a busy and much-beloved member of San Diego’s theater, music and opera communities, and he has loved the city right back.

Besides finding a new artistic home, Morris also found love. In 2013, he met Lisa Morris, and they married two years later. They share a picturesque home in La Mesa with their dogs, and on weekends, he sings and plays in the Westminster Choir and Orchestra at First Presbyterian Church of San Diego.

Morris said he gets restless if he’s not busy. Between gigs, he’s memorizing lines or music, auditioning or teaching himself to play new instruments. One trait that he believes has helped him book so much work is his determination to show up on the first day of rehearsals with everything memorized.

Theater director Delicia Turner Sonnenberg has cast Morris in multiple roles over the years at the Old Globe, Moxie Theatre and New Village Arts. She said she loves working with him, and there’s nobody like him in town.

“He’s such a big guy with a big heart and big talent,” Turner Sonnenberg said. “His combination of commanding presence and honest vulnerability make him a joy to work with and compelling to watch on stage.”

Victor Morris is a La Mesa-based actor, operatic singer, and multi-instrumentalist musician.

(Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Morris was born on a U.S. Army base near Munich in 1956, the son of an Army paratrooper from Brooklyn, N.Y., and a mother from Georgia. Growing up, he spoke both German and English fluently and only listened to classical music. In sixth grade, he taught himself to read music and play the trumpet. Then, in 1969, when he was 14, his mother died and his father moved their family back to Brooklyn.

After teaching himself to play many other instruments, Morris went to college for a music degree, first at a small Methodist college in Kentucky and later at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. While playing in the pit orchestra for “West Side Story,” the student playing the role of Action broke his leg and Morris volunteered to step into the part, having memorized every line of the show during rehearsals.

“The way the audience reacted after I sang ‘Gee, Officer Krupke’ was like something I’d never felt before … the experience was so freeing,” he said.

Ten hours later, Morris changed his major to theater.

After graduating from UNC Greeley, Morris launched himself into the vagabond life of a gigging actor. He taught Shakespeare, performed in musicals, danced a lot and earned his Equity card in 1985. To fill the gaps between jobs, he worked as a ranch hand and rodeo clown, loaded and drove trucks and worked as a fight choreographer.

Then he moved to Los Angeles and landed some smaller roles in film and television. Eventually, he ended up in Washington state, which would become an artistic home for many years. There he met and married his first wife, and they had two daughters: Anaka, now 29 and a TV writer-director and filmmaker, and Raina, now 25, who’s a writer for the Netflix series “Emily in Paris” and executive storybook editor for the Apple TV+ series “Schmigadoon.”

While living in Washington, Morris pursued another passion — opera. In 1999, he spent the summer in Milan, training under famed tenor Franco Corelli for the roles of Othello in Verdi’s “Otello” and Dick Johnson in Puccini’s “Girl of the Golden West.” On weekends, he’d take the train to Switzerland to meet and study with Grace Bumbry, the famed African American mezzo-soprano. Unfortunately at the time, Black tenors had a hard time getting cast in anything other than the rare production of “Porgy and Bess,” so he put those dreams on hold.

After going through a divorce and relocating to San Diego, Morris was ready to start a new chapter. He found it on the theater stage, first at San Diego Repertory Theatre in “Storyville,” then at La Jolla Playhouse in “His Girl Friday” and ultimately at Moxie Theatre under the direction of Turner Sonnenberg in Alice Childress’ landmark 1955 play “Trouble in Mind.”

Victor Morris is a busy working actor, operatic singer and multi-instrumental musician. He was photographed with his trumpet at his home in La Mesa on Aug. 18.

(Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Morris played Sheldon Forrester, a seemingly submissive Black character in “Trouble in Mind.” He returned to the role of Sheldon last year at the Old Globe, also under Turner Sonnenberg’s direction. Morris said not many Black men like to play the character, who puts up with fierce discrimination in order to stay employed, but he understands the role.

“I feel I’ve got it down. I am Sheldon. When you get to be in your 60s, you understand him better,” Morris said. “Now I’m getting offers to play Sheldon from all over the world.”

Another role Morris has played more than once is Victor, the handsome cowboy in local playwright Dea Hurston’s 2021 musical “1222 Oceanfront: A Black Family Christmas,” which returns to the Carlsbad theater for its third holiday season in November. Hurston wrote the role specifically for Morris, gave the character Morris’ first name and turned the character into a cowboy, because Morris loves horses and always wears a cowboy hat when he’s out and about.

“I’ve never had a role written for me,” Morris said. “That role has made me a celebrity. I can’t go to Vons without someone stopping me and asking if I’m Victor the cowboy. I get to do it again this fall and will keep doing it until they get tired of me.”

Now that opera companies are more open-minded about color blind casting, Morris has decided to give opera another try. He’s working his way through the two Wagner roles, and he practices regularly on the trumpet, tuba and flugelhorn, because someday soon he’d like to be part of a first-rate brass quartet or quintet.

“I just want to be a 21st century renaissance man,” he said. “I hope they write that on my tombstone.”