Explore the star-studded trajectory of Bay Area singers on their path to Broadway

The Bay Area is one of the great theater hubs of the nation, a breeding ground for new work and for the stars of tomorrow, so it’s no surprise that the road to Broadway for countless performers starts in the Bay.

Musical legend Carol Channing grew up in the Bay Area, after all, graduating from San Francisco’s Lowell High School in 1938 before winning Broadway fame in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and her Tony award-winning turn in the original “Hello Dolly!”

Last year’s “Camelot” revival on Broadway featured Oakland native and former Berkeley Shakespeare Festival artistic director Dakin Matthews as Merlyn, as well as longtime San Francisco actor Marilee Talkington as Morgan Le Fey.

San Francisco native B.D. Wong, who starred in “Big Data” at ACT earlier this winter, won a Tony for “M. Butterfly” in his Broadway debut. Fellow San Franciscan Francis Jue got his Equity card in “Pacific Overtures” at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in 1988 and later performed in the same show on Broadway, as well as “M. Butterfly” and “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”

Bay Area native Taylor Iman Jones just finished a year-long Broadway stint as Catherine Parr in “Six.” Berkeley High grad Ar’iel Stachel won a Tony for his role in “The Band’s Visit,” an experience he discussed in his recent solo show, “Out of Character,” at Berkeley Rep.

And Bryce Pinkham, the Tony-nominated star of “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” grew up in Lafayette, his destiny set in motion at the age of … 6?

“My parents had a parent-teacher conference with my first-grade teacher who said, ‘I need you to find your son an outlet for his reckless creativity,’” Pinkham says.

So his parents enrolled him in theater camp at Diablo Valley College, where he was cast in the children’s ensemble of DVC’s production of “The Music Man.” When his father, David, came in to talk to the director about a planned family vacation, the elder Pinkham wound up cast in the show as well.

Meanwhile, Bryce Pinkham kept acting as one of many hobbies, but didn’t take it seriously until midway through college at Boston University. In grad school at Yale’s School of Drama, he auditioned for an early reading of “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” and didn’t land it, but director Alex Timbers cast him in another play fresh out of grad school.

But if Pinkham thought it was all going to be that easy, auditioning in New York City soon disabused him of that notion.

“I got an apartment with two friends, and I was running around to three different part-time jobs,” Pinkham says. “I was a waiter, I was a private English tutor, and I was a kids’ soccer coach. And then I ended up booking the New York premiere of ‘Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,’ which would eventually go on to be my Broadway debut.”

That was the first of several Broadway shows, but it was his star turn in “Gentleman’s Guide” that really put Pinkham on the map. Most recently he’s been performing in the hit off-Broadway revival of “Little Shop of Horrors” as the sadistic dentist.

A class Pinkham taught last year at Boston University was titled “Reckless Creativity,” and one thing he tells students is to take a business course.

“I thought I was getting away with something by going into the arts and doing something that was playful and athletic,” Pinkham says. “What I quickly realized is this a business like any other, and I’m the CEO of my own startup. It’s called show business. It’s not called ‘show fun’ or ‘show everybody-gets-a-chance.’”

Starring alongside Pinkham in “Little Shop” was San Francisco native Darren Criss of “Glee” fame, who got his start in ACT’s Young Conservatory and starred on Broadway in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”

Clearly, there’s something about “Little Shop” — and it’s not just the appeal of Seymour and the Audreys, carnivorous and otherwise. The show is a magnet for Bay Area-bred singers.

Earlier in the “Little Shop” run, before Pinkham and Criss joined the cast, SF-born Lena Hall played Audrey (the woman, not the plant), and her Seymour was Matt Doyle, a graduate of Larkspur’s Redwood High School. Both are Tony Award winners. Hall won for her role as Yizhak in the 2014 “Hedwig” revival, and Doyle won in 2022 for the gender-swapped revival of “Company.” In that same “Company” was San Mateo-born Bobby Conte, who’s currently back on Broadway as Cousin Kevin in “The Who’s Tommy.”

There might be something about “Aladdin” and its magic carpet ride, too. Half Moon Bay siblings Adam and Arielle Jacobs both starred in that Broadway production at different times. Adam originated the title role and took it on tour, while Arielle joined the Broadway cast as Princess Jasmine. Adam also had star turns in “The Lion King” and “Les Miserables,” and Arielle recently starred as Imelda Marcos in “Here Lies Love.”

When he brought “Aladdin” to the Orpheum in 2017, Adam Jacobs had some advice for theater kids with Broadway dreams: “I always tell kids, don’t forget that passion, because a lot of it’s just perseverance and determination and sticking with it.”

From the outside, the Bay to Broadway trajectory may look straightforward, but Adam said, “I worked my way up with regional gigs and cruise ships and theme parks and got as much experience as I could. Try to come to New York or L.A. with a little bit of experience instead of jumping straight in, and then don’t let anybody take that passion away from you.”

Hayward native James Monroe Iglehart won a Tony for his role as the Genie in that same original “Aladdin” cast. This year Iglehart has back-to-back Broadway stints as King Arthur in “Spamalot” and Louis Armstrong in “A Wonderful World” this fall.

The current Jasmine in “Aladdin” is Sonya Balsara, who grew up in El Cerrito and Berkeley. She’s played Jasmine since January of 2023 after a two-month stint in mid-2022, just a few months after she performed in TheatreWorks’ “Sense and Sensibility” musical. This starring role was her Broadway debut.

“I saw a production of ‘Oklahoma’ at Albany High School in fourth grade, and it changed everything,” Balsara recalls. “I went to Silver Screen Video in El Cerrito Plaza and rented the movie and wrote out a whole script of ‘Oklahoma.’ I held auditions at my elementary school and cast it and then put it on in my living room.”

Having grown up doing children’s theater with Contra Costa Civic Theatre and other companies, Balsara went from Berkeley High to New York University, where she was cast in her first feature film while still in college.

“I worked as a legal assistant and booked a few short film and TV things and a lot of commercials,” Balsara says. “But it took about a year and a half until I booked my first professional theater job, which was ‘West Side Story’ in Tokyo. I played Maria. Getting that job really catapulted my career.”

Appropriately enough for a Disney princess, Balsara accentuates the positive in her advice for Broadway hopefuls.

“Kindness goes such a long way in this industry, and people remember that about you, if you’re easy to work with,” Balsara says. “Everyone’s really, really talented, and the thing that’s going to set you apart is really knowing who you are, being your authentic self and being kind. And also knowing that your success is not a reflection of your talent and ability and even your hard work. A lot of the time your success is about luck, and you have to be patient and kind to yourself about it, too.”

Still on the road to Broadway is Fremont’s Shefali Deshpande, who plays Mrs. Darling in the national tour of “Peter Pan” that will come to Broadway San Jose this June.

It’s an adaptation of the 1954 musical newly revised by playwright Larissa FastHorse. Playing young John is another Bay Area native, William Foon, who has performed locally with Walnut Creek’s Center Rep and Lafayette’s Peter Pan Foundation.

“I’ve been singing and dancing since I was a little kid,” Deshpande says. “I did tap and jazz, I did some ballet, I did Indian classical dance and Hindi film dance. When I was 12, there was a community theater production of ‘Peter Pan.’ It was the first musical I ever did, which feels like a crazy full-circle situation now.”

Deshpande graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in political science and a minor in musical theater. In L.A., she initially focused on screen work and releasing her own original R&B music before returning to musical theater in 2021 as Kamala Harris in the touring Capitol Comedy musical, “Biden My Time.”

“It is a marathon, not a sprint,” Deshpande says. “You will watch people you were in class with skyrocket, and all you can do is be happy for them, because everybody’s timing is different. That phrase, ‘comparison is the thief of joy,’ could not be more true. What it takes is perseverance, hard work and focusing on what it is you want and then not stopping until you get it.”

So Deshpande’s advice for the next generation of performers is to stick with it and not be deterred when things don’t work out at first.

“In this industry, there are no guarantees,” Deshpande adds. “I could still be auditioning 10 years from now and never have landed anything that felt like a big break. But that’s what you sign up for, because the reward is so high. When a little girl comes up to you after the show and says, ‘Oh my gosh, that was amazing!’ and she’s inspired to go back to her school and do plays — that’s the biggest reward.”