Sharon Wheatley

Sharon Wheatley is an American actress, singer, and writer born on December 7, 1967, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her Broadway career spans from 1982 to 2017 and includes productions such as Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Avenue Q, and Come from Away.

Wheatley attended Ursuline Academy in Cincinnati, graduating in 1985, and was inducted into the school's Performing Arts Hall of Fame in 2015. She subsequently enrolled in the Musical Theatre program at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music, where she studied voice under Barbara Honn and completed the program in 1990. In 2007, CCM honored her with its Young Alumnae Award, given in recognition of excellence in Musical Theatre or a related field by an alum of the program within the past two decades. Wheatley later attended Pace University, earning her BFA in 2012 and receiving multiple writing awards during her time there.

Before relocating to New York City, Wheatley toured nationally with The Sound of Music, in which she played Baroness Elberfeld. She moved to New York in 1991 and secured her first Equity job in late 1992 with the national tour of Les Misérables, where she was a member of the ensemble and understudied the roles of Eponine and Cosette. Her Broadway debut came in 1994, when she joined the original Broadway production of Les Misérables, directed by Trevor Nunn and John Caird, as a swing. From 2000 to 2005, she appeared in The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway as Madam Firmin and as a vacation swing, and in 2000 she was part of the closing company of Cats, playing Jennyanydots. Wheatley holds the distinction of being the only actress to have appeared in Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, and Cats on Broadway.

Wheatley originated the role of Kate/Lucy/Mrs. T/Yellow Bear in Avenue Q at the Wynn Casino and Resort in Las Vegas before joining the Broadway production's closing company in 2007. During her time with the Broadway run of Avenue Q, she served not only as a standby for those roles but also as assistant stage manager and dance captain for part of her tenure. In July 2018, she returned to the role of Kate/Lucy for two performances marking the production's fifteenth anniversary in New York City.

Her most sustained Broadway credit is Come from Away, in which she played Diane and others. She had been with the production since its first professional staging at the La Jolla Playhouse in the spring of 2015, and she remained with the Tony Award-winning musical throughout its entire Broadway run, which began in 2016. She also toured with the production prior to its Broadway opening. Wheatley met her wife, Broadway stage manager Martha Donaldson, during the debut run of Come from Away in 2015; the two married in 2017.

Wheatley's regional credits include Yente in Fiddler on the Roof, Domina in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Vicki in The Full Monty, and Miss Watson in Big River, with the majority of those productions staged at the Weston Playhouse in Weston, Vermont. Additional regional work includes the Baker's Wife in Into the Woods and Rosabella in The Most Happy Fella, both at Lyric Opera Cleveland. As a concert soloist, she has performed with pops orchestras in Detroit, New Jersey, Oklahoma City, Jacksonville, Milwaukee, Omaha, and Seattle, working with conductors Jack Everly, Stuart Chaftez, and Charles Prince.

As a writer, Wheatley published her first memoir, Til the Fat Girl Sings: From an Overweight Nobody to a Broadway Somebody, on June 1, 2006, receiving coverage from outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Good Morning America, and BroadwayWorld. The book's release was followed by a year of public appearances and book-launch concerts. Her writing work expanded to include sketch comedy for Kristin Chenoweth, an award-winning skit for the 2017 Gypsy of the Year Awards written with her Come from Away castmates, and national writing for Weight Watchers from 2011 to 2015. She also wrote the stage show Avenue Zoo for the Bronx Zoo and maintained a personal blog, My Own Space, which included the recurring feature Smash—Fact or Fiction?, a blog and quiz following each episode of NBC's Smash. That feature was covered by New York Magazine on two occasions and appeared in Marie Claire Magazine. In 2022, Wheatley published her second book, Drive: Stories from Somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere, which chronicles her journey with her wife by RV from Ohio to California during the pandemic to drop her child off for the summer.

Wheatley was previously married to Robert Meffe, a conductor and music professor whom she met while studying at the University of Cincinnati. The two had two children together. She credits her early passion for performing to summers spent working as a performer at Quisisana Resort in Maine, where she continues to return as a guest and mentor to young performers.