BY KAREN BOSSICK

Kelsey Scott creates in front of the camera and behind.

She played Anne Northup in the Oscar-winning “!2 Years A Slave” and Wes Gibbins’ mother Rose on “How to Get Away with Murder.” She appeared in the Broadway Tour of “Dreamgirls,” “Better Call Saul,” “NCIS” and “Grey’s Anatomy” and she survived an undead apocalypse in AMC’s digital series “Fear the Walking Dead.”

She was nominated for an Emmy for her roles on that show and “Giants” and she just wrapped up the title role on stage in a Tallahassee, Fla., Shakespeare production of “Antony and Cleopatra.”

After she gets some screenwriting out of the way, the Mezzo-Soprano will head to Sun Valley to perform pop songs and musical theater for Sun Valley Opera and Broadway at The Argyros in Ketchum.

The evening kicks off with a Diva Party at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 25, with wines, a charcuterie table and hearty passed hors d’oeuvres created by Silver Fox Catering. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $75 for the concert only at https://www.theargyros.org/calendar/balladsbroadwayandbanter.  They’re $225 for the concert plus the Diva Party, available at https://www.sunvalleyopera.com/.

Scott will sing “Wind Beneath My Wings,” “I Will Always Love You” and a version of “Autumn Leaves” as she tells the story of her life and career in a concert dubbed “Ballads, Broadway and Banter…An Evening of Music and Musing.” The evening will also include a little poetry that Scott has composed.

“It will take the audience on a journey through my personal and professional life and it will finish up with aspirations for the future,” said Scott, who has shared speaking platforms with Oprah Winfrey, Jesse Jackson and the late Maya Angelou and Shirley Chisholm. “It’s a mini-life retrospective. The songs and original poetry I’m sharing are intended not only to entertain, but to invite the audience to get to know the entertainer. You could say it’s a stage version of a first date! And somewhere down the line, I hope folks will want to know even more.”

Scott, who lives in Los Angeles, took her first step onto the stage as she competed in a pageant at 3 in Atlanta, Ga. She attended a performing arts school during high school, and followed that up with a degree in Broadcast Journalism at Florida A&M University and an MFA in Film at Florida State University.

“I stepped onto the stage very young and over the years my interest in other artistic outlets just grew from local theater to national TV, then film, then as a writer and director/producer,” she said. “I’m lucky enough to be a position where I can do so many different things. I get bored easily so it works for me to not be doing just one thing. In fact, it’s better if I can be doing multiple things at the same time.”

A typical day for Scott might involve getting up and working on a made-for-TV movie script involving a romance in Monaco that she was commissioned to do. Later, she’ll practice the music she plans to sing in Sun Valley. Then she will record an audition on tape.

“I juggle things intentionally,” she said. “I once flew across the country to audition for a movie, then flew back home where I was cast in a play. Then I hopped in the car and drove across the country to do the play and halfway across I got the call that I’d gotten the part in the movie. So, I stopped in Louisianna to shoot the movie, then finished my drive to Atlanta to start the play.”

Scott said one of her most memorable experiences was working with Viola Davis on “How to Get Away with Murder.”

“Sometimes when you do TV shows you get one episode to develop a character. So, it’s nice when you can perform your character across multiple episodes because you get to develop the character and watch them grow. And, of course, working with Viola was the icing on the cake.”

Frank Meyer who co-founded Sun Valley Opera and Broadway, saw Scott perform in “Once on This Island,” an adaptation of “The Little Mermaid,” in Seattle.

“She’s a triple threat as a dancer, actor, singer…and then a writer,” he said. “When she performs and expresses her lyrics, you can tell she’s a very experienced stage and film and TV actor. She’s very entertaining and a lot of fun.”

Scott said it was the third time she had performed that musical. She performed a different character each time.

“It feels like I’m doing it for the first time each time,” she said. “It’s challenging and fun to relearn something you knew from a different perspective. I like to color outside the lines and to be scared. If you’re comfortable, you’re not growing and I never want to be complacent and sedentary in my artistry.”

Scott said she’s been blessed to have a great support system with a family that’s always stood behind her dreams. And she’s surrounded herself with like-minded people.

“That doesn’t mean that they were doing the same things I was doing. It means they had the same outlook on life, on career, on personal development—to always be growing. The journey is never going to be easy. But if you’re surrounded by people who understand you and can hold you up, if you can lock onto the people who love you, it makes it so much better. I’m just stepping into a new season of artistry that I’m putting out into the world and I couldn’t be more excited.”