Emily Koch knew all about Detroit’s Fisher Theatre when she was a student at Interlochen Arts Academy during the late 2000s. She was even hired to perform for Broadway in Detroit season announcements and other events there. But “Kimberly Akimbo,” which arrives at the Fisher this week on its first national tour, marks the first time Koch will actually be performing for paying audiences at the Fisher — which she acknowledges is “a big deal.”

“My whole time (at Interlochen) you heard about the Fisher,” Koch says by phone from the tour’s recent stop in Cincinnati. “It has such a great reputation, so … I’m really happy to be playing a show there, finally.”

And “Kimberly Akimbo” is a production that’s close to Koch’s heart.

The coming-of-age musical about a teenager grappling with an aging disease won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, in 2023. Koch, who joined the Broadway company later in its run, plays Kimberly’s criminal-with-good-intentions aunt Debra, a role that also scored a Tony for originating actress Bonnie Milligan. “It’s too much fun at times,” Koch, 33, says of the part, which includes the showcase songs “Better,” “How to Wash a Check” and “The Inevitable Truth.” “I hope I have some of her good qualities; some of her not-good qualities I avoid, at least when I’m not on stage.”

Koch first saw “Kimberly Akimbo” when it opened off-Broadway in 2021, while she herself was appearing on Broadway in “Waitress.” “I zeroed in on it at that point. I was like: ‘Oh, man. I would do anything to be in this show if it transfers to Broadway.’ And then I got lucky and got to cover two of the parts (also Kimberly’s mom Pattie) over 18 months, and then they offered me the tour, which was huge.

“It’s such a gift as an actor to play somebody who’s this bold and brash and funny,” Koch says of Debra. “That’s been the most exciting part of it. She doesn’t say anything she doesn’t mean. She gets what she wants — maybe to lengths, criminal lengths, I wouldn’t go. But it’s just so fun to play somebody who is so unabashedly themselves and unabashedly strong. It’s been inspiring to me as a person, as well.”

Theater, meanwhile, has been Koch’s pursuit for her entire life, as she tells it.

She hails from Los Angeles, where her father is a talent agent and her mother a music teacher. “It’s just in my DNA,” she says. “I feel like I came out of the womb obsessed with theater. I was in it from minute one and pursued it intensely ever since.” Her earliest memory is playing Gretel as a kindergartener in a community theater product of “The Sound of Music,” while her mother’s unrealized desire to attend Interlochen led Koch to summer camp programs there in 2006 and 2007. She then received a scholarship for her junior and senior years of high school, graduating in 2009.

“That place is just heaven on earth,” Koch says. “I was so thrilled I didn’t even have to think about it. It was like, ‘Let’s go!’”

After subsequently graduating from Carnegie Mellon University, Koch was “off to the races,” moving to New York immediately. Within nine months, she was playing Elphaba in “Wicked” on Broadway before moving on to “Waitress” and then “Kimberly Akimbo.” She’s booked on the tour until October, but she is casting an eye towards whatever comes next.

“I’ve been really fortunate. When I was in ‘Wicked,’ ‘Waitress’ came out and I wanted to be in that, and when I was in ‘Waitress,’ ‘Kimberly’ came out and I wanted to be in that … and they all happened,” says Koch, whose boyfriend, fellow actor Jim Hogan, is also in “Kimberly Akimbo” playing Kimberly’s father, Buddy Levaco. “Now that I’m in ‘Kimberly,’ what is next? Something original would be incredible, something I know nothing about, that I can create from the beginning.

“I have some time to kind of marinate on that — or maybe write it myself. But I want the next step to be something I’m really excited about.”