Proactive Performer

Kristin Wetherington ’05

Greenville native Kristin Wetherington ’05 was in town earlier this year singing Broadway showstoppers with the Greenville Choral Society. And she’ll be back in December for her annual holiday show. But when East caught up with her, she was home in New York and spent nearly an hour talking about her favorite roles, what it takes to make it on stage and what ECU has meant to her.

“I can’t ignore how lucky I’ve been,” she says. “I’ve worked really hard, so it hasn’t been handed to me, but I do feel lucky about the types of roles I’ve gotten to play.”

Since graduating from ECU and setting out to make a career, she’s appeared in at least 20 international, off-Broadway and regional theater plays, sung with the USO, earned a master’s degree at Harvard’s American Repertory Theatre and taught musical theater in Manhattan afterschool programs.

“A lot of people think the dream is this one result – ‘I want to be famous,’” she says. “I think the dream is being able to do what you love to do and make a living.”

She’s won Broadway World awards for best supporting actress for her roles as the ditzy Norma Cassidy in Ocean State Theater’s 2017 production of Victor/Victoria and as Helen Keller’s mother, Kate, in their 2016 production of The Miracle Worker. Last year, she played singer Sally Bowles in Cabaret – the role made famous by Liza Minelli in the 1972 film – and says that’s her favorite so far.

Landing and excelling in those roles drew on lessons she learned at ECU from faculty members such as dance professor Tommi Galaska and John Shearin, the late director of the School of Theatre and Dance.

“When (Shearin) passed, I was in tech for Victor/Victoria, and I wanted to come for his memorial, and I heard his voice in my head: ‘You have a job to do,’” she says. “He instilled so many things I still think about every day – if you’re on time you’re late – and a work ethic. You’re relentless in your work, you’re always looking to make it better, and I owe that to John and to Tommi.”

In 2022, Wetherington returned to ECU Summer Theatre to play Tanya in Mamma Mia. Professor emeritus Jeffery Phipps suggested she do a concert for Arts of the Pamlico, which morphed into a holiday show. “And I kind of turned it into an annual tradition,” she says. “My first year, I hired six (ECU theatre and dance) students to be backup vocalists and dancers, and I continue to do that every year because I like to give them a job opportunity and I like to kind of bridge that gap” between education and work. Venues this December include Pitt Community College and New Bern Civic Theatre. While she’s plenty busy, there are roles she would jump at.

“Jenna in the Broadway musical Waitress,” she says. “And I would love to play Alice Murphy in Bright Star. There’s one thing those two shows have in common is they’re both Southern women. I love playing Southern women.”