Broadway
Wills made her Broadway debut in 2004 as the understudy for Belle in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Eight months later she had to leave abruptly as she became an immediate replacement for Jennifer Westfeldt as Eileen co-starring opposite Brooke Shields inWonderful Town. Both Wills and Shields received amazing reviews with Clive Barnes of the New York Post stating that "Both Shields and Wills are smashing. These two are not replacements, they are renewals". and Ben Brantley singled Wills out for her own little feature. They also re-released the original new cast recording with their voices replacing the original stars.
Wonderful Town only ran four more months so Wills was out of work and decided against other people's better judgment to accept a replacement ensemble position in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White. However, this productions was very short lived and Wills performed in it for just one week. But that job led directly to Wills getting to audition for her dream job. Christine Daae in The Phantom of the Opera. She was immediately asked to become the Alternate (performing the role twice weekly) and just two months later was asked to take the Principal position on the National Tour for 10 weeks as they traveled through Canada where she received rave reviews. Upon her return to NYC, she became the Principal in the Broadway Production and remained so for many years. Overall she was with the production for over 4 years from March 2006 - August 2010 with time off for maternity leave.
Wills also has sung in concert with City Center's Encores!, at Town Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, with the Houston and Asheville Symphonies at at the Mar-a-Lago club for Donald Trump and guests.
Read more about this topic: Jennifer Hope Wills
Famous quotes containing the word broadway:
“The name of the town isn’t important. It’s the one that’s just twenty-eight minutes from the big city. Twenty-three if you catch the morning express. It’s on a river and it’s got houses and stores and churches. And a main street. Nothing fancy like Broadway or Market, just plain Broadway. Drug, dry good, shoes. Those horrible little chain stores that breed like rabbits.”
—Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993)
“Too many Broadway actors in motion pictures lost their grip on success—had a feeling that none of it had ever happened on that sun-drenched coast, that the coast itself did not exist, there was no California. It had dropped away like a hasty dream and nothing could ever have been like the things they thought they remembered.”
—Mae West (1892–1980)
“We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)