Katie Newton - Musical Theatre Artist

As a musical theatre singer and actress, Katie recently performed in "Jesus Christ Superstar" at New Orleans' iconic Lyric Theatre and "Band Geeks" at the beautiful Everblue Arts Festival. She has also performed in local and university productions. She was among nine globally selected musical theatre performers to train at New York's prestigious century old Stella Adler Studio of Acting, eleven musical theatre performers globally chosen for Germany’s International Performing Arts Institute, and won the National Association of Teacher’s of Singers (NATS-ALA) competition prior to graduating from the University of Mobile. Her musical theatre influences include Julie Andrews, Audra McDonald, Barbra Streisand, Kristin Chenoweth, and Sara Bareillis.

In high school, she was a featured soloist in a Vegas themed show, which competed against international competition, and was named FAME’s "Grand National Champion," receiving “Best Vocals,” at the New York Symphony Center on Broadway. She also founded “Healing Voices,” which performed over two dozen times, primarily at in-patient senior facilities and jails. The Governor honored the choir, for its “cultural and civic leadership,” proclaiming “through the choir’s performances, you have selflessly enriched the lives of and help meet the needs of those who are too often forgotten – hospice, nursing home, and rehabilitation patients and their families, foster care children, and the incarcerated.”

A native of Mississippi, called “The Birthplace of America’s Music,” her beautifully distinctive nuanced style pays tribute to the state’s renowned jazz, R&B, and gospel tradition. She takes pride in Mississippi’s art's heritage, which is musical home to “The King of the Blues," “The King of Rock and Roll,” and “The Father of Country Music,” literary giants William Faulkner, Willie Morris, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, Tennessee Williams, John Grisham, Katherine Stockett, and Greg Iles, filmmaker Tate Taylor, actor James Earl Jones, and has great admiration for one the world and Kosciusko, Mississippi know by one name - Oprah. Her favorite actors, whether on stage or film, are Viola Davis - she’s in awe of Viola Davis - and Mississippi’s own Morgan Freeman.