“It was then that I decided that I could see myself doing musical theater instead of opera, which I studied in high school,” Courtney said. She was off to the races, and proved to be not just gifted, but also enterprising.

“All throughout my life, if I had an idea and I felt strongly about it, I was always working to get to that goal,” she said. “I didn’t have many resources easily available and easily accessible but I would use what I had.”

While many of her peers at the University of Michigan enjoyed spring break during what she called her “junior-slash-senior year” (she graduated early), Courtney traveled to New York for non-Equity auditions. Waiting to meet with a regional theater for a summer-stock gig, she spotted a call for a “Dreamgirls” revival and managed to pass along her headshot and résumé, even though she didn’t have an agent. She earned a callback, but was not cast. (The production ultimately did not happen, either.)

Around graduation, Courtney was back in New York, auditioning for “Dear Evan Hansen” and the Ivo van Hove revival of “West Side Story.” She landed both, starting as a standby in “Hansen” before moving on to “West Side Story” as a member of the ensemble and the understudy for Maria.

This was a bracing time for Courtney, who said she relished working with van Hove and the avant-garde choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker on their boldly staged revival, even when they tested her comfort zone. “That particular process was challenging only because in the ensemble, dancing isn’t my forte,” Courtney said. “Particularly, Anne Teresa’s style is very specific, and I had no idea how to move in that way.”

The pandemic shutdown — a time when Courtney, like most actors, felt in limbo — put a definitive end to that experience: “West Side Story” was not among the Broadway shows to reopen. Once things crawled back to life, she sent what she estimated to be around a hundred video auditions. (And she landed a part on the pilot of the Queen Latifah series “The Equalizer.”)

Then “& Juliet” materialized.

The show had premiered in Britain in 2019 to lukewarm reviews, but received nine Olivier Award nominations the following year. By the time the director, Luke Sheppard, conducted auditions for a pre-Broadway run in Toronto, he was very familiar with the role of Juliet. And yet Courtney took him by surprise.