For a stage performer, there’s no greater achievement than starring in a Broadway production. Encompassing 41 professional theaters in New York City (NYC), the Broadway Theater District is a 13-mile street with a history dating back to the late 1800s. Theater, meanwhile, has been part of the fabric of NYC since before the American Revolution.
Over the past 100 years, many actors and actresses have risen to national fame through their performances on Broadway. Performers like Julie Andrews, Angela Lansbury, Patti LuPone, Barbara Streisand, and Nathan Lane are all still highly regarded among those in the theater industry.
Below are five young standout performers who are well on their way to making a name for themselves on Broadway.
Joaquina Kalukango
Joaquina Kalukango has already caught the attention of the Broadway power players and the entertainment industry as a whole. The 34-year-old Juilliard-trained actress won the 2022 Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical for Paradise Square. She was also nominated for Drama Desk, Drama League, and Outer Critics Circle Awards for her performance and was named Associated Press Breakthrough Entertainer for 2022. The accolades are somewhat surprising, considering she wasn’t originally cast as the lead in Paradise Square and was hesitant about singing on stage.
“It was truly a powerful moment, especially for me, because I had such a fear of doing musicals for a very long time,” Kalukango told the AP. “I was an actor at heart. I think it was a great moment in my trajectory of owning a new side of myself that I wasn’t that comfortable with sharing for a while.”
Kalukango received a Tony nomination for lead actress in a play in 2020 for Slave Play and, in 2012, earned the Outstanding Debut Performance honor at the Theatre World Awards for Hurt Village. She’s also been getting film and TV opportunities as of late, with a lead role in Regina King’s directorial debut One Night in Miami and a recurring role in the HBO series Lovecraft Country.
Myles Frost
Myles Frost appeared as a contestant on season 13 of NBC’s The Voice and played lead roles in high school plays like Hairspray and Legally Blonde, but his Broadway debut was a whole new challenge altogether. Frost, a young actor from Washington, D.C., landed the lead role of Michael Jackson in MJ after Tony nominee Ephraim Sykes withdrew from the production due to scheduling conflicts. Not only did Frost do justice to the challenging role of the “King of Pop,” he won the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical.
Frost’s star-making performance earned rave reviews from performers and critics alike. David Gordon of TheaterMania.com said that it was as if he wasn’t just impersonating but “channeling Jackson.” Frost’s award-winning performance recently earned him a role in Ava DuVernay’s Caste alongside Audra McDonald, Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga, and Nick Offerman.
Amber Iman
Although she hasn’t yet won a Tony, Amber Iman is certainly an emerging Broadway star. The Georgia native’s stage resume includes playing Nina Simone on Broadway and Peggy/Maria in Hamilton’s first national tour. More recently, she wrote and starred in a solo show, An Evening With Amber Iman, and played powerful women characters in the musicals Lempicka and Goddess. She was the first woman to perform on Broadway following the pandemic-related shutdown, performing her one-woman show to a crowd of 150 artists at The Broadway Theatre.
A graduate of Howard University, Iman made her Broadway debut as Simone in Soul Doctor (2013) and earned a Clive Barnes Award nomination. She’s also an activist and advocate for creating more opportunities for Black performers on Broadway. To that end, she’s the co-founder of Black Women on Broadway and the Tony-winning Broadway Advocacy Coalition.
Solea Pfeiffer
More than two decades after Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous hit the big screen, Solea Pfeiffer starred as the groupie-muse Penny Lane, originally played by Kate Hudson, in the Broadway musical adaptation of the film. Pfeiffer has also played the role of Eliza in Hamilton’s national tour and recently created a solo show, You Are Here, about what it’s like being biracial in the United States. Similarly, she made her feature film debut in Tyler Perry’s A Jazzman’s Blues as a Black woman in the South passing as white in the 1940s.
Justin Cooley
A young stage performer who has earned acclaim for his ability to charm and convey compassion, Justin Cooley made his Broadway debut as the nerdy outsider Seth in Kimberly Akimbo, a play about a young woman with an aging disease. He previously played the role off-Broadway. Cooley, who is still in school studying musical theater at Texas Christian University, was a finalist at the 2021 Jimmy Awards, also known as the National High School Musical Theatre Awards.