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1989, the Fort Wayne years
The claim: Heather Headley was born on 5 October 1974 in Barataria, Trinidad, and her Fort Wayne claim is the formation kind, the strongest kind this section recognizes after birth. In 1989, when she was fifteen, her father, a pastor, was called to the McKee Street Church of God in Fort Wayne, and the family emigrated to Indiana. Headley arrived a Trinidad schoolgirl who sang in church, and Fort Wayne gave her the American musical stage. At Northrop High School she joined Charisma, the school's resident show choir, became its featured soloist, and starred as Fanny Brice in the school's production of Funny Girl, a role that forecasts a career with embarrassing precision. She graduated from Northrop in 1993 and went to Northwestern University to study musical theatre, leaving in her junior year when the professional stage called.
The fame: The call was Ragtime, and then, in 1997, the originating company of The Lion King on Broadway, where she created the role of Nala. In 2000 she originated the title role of Aida, Elton John and Tim Rice's Broadway musical, and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, with the Drama Desk Award beside it. A recording career followed; her gospel album Audience of One won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary R&B Gospel Album in 2010; a later audience knows her from the Netflix series Sweet Magnolias. Fort Wayne marked the formation in the year it paid off: in 2000 the city declared 10 June Heather Headley Day. Her full entry stands in the people record, under the headline its writer gave it, Trinidad to Northrop High School to a Tony. The fame roll endorses the headline. A pastor's daughter stepped off a plane into an Indiana winter at fifteen, and the city's high school stage is where the voice the world knows was first pointed at Broadway.
Sources:
- EBSCO Research Starters, Heather Headley biography (born in Trinidad; the 1989 move to Fort Wayne at fifteen; Northrop High School, Charisma, Funny Girl; the 2000 Tony Award for Aida; the 2010 Grammy for Audience of One; Heather Headley Day, 10 June 2000).
- Encyclopedia.com, Headley, Heather (the Fort Wayne move of 1989; the Northrop musicals; the Northwestern years).