Shelley Cooper is a two-time Off-Broadway award-winning solo performer, playwright, composer, and director whose original work has been presented across three continents. She is the creator of four award-winning solo works exploring the lives and stories of women in history, earning distinctions including Best One-Woman Show Off-Broadway, Pick of the Fringe at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, Critics’ Choice for Best Dramatic Actor at the Orlando Fringe Festival, and the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Award. Her four solo works have received significant critical acclaim as well as numerous awards and festival honors. Her work has been featured in The Hollywood Reporter, which praised her 2025 Hollywood Fringe work for “weaving a magic spell.” Stage Takes hailed her performance in Emily F*ing Dickinson as a “tour-de-force,” praising her “astonishing” range and ability to move between the extremes of Dickinson’s emotional life. NoHo Arts has described Cooper as “quietly famous for her unusual historical character studies in the solo world,” calling her work “a riot of music and laughter” and “breathtakingly intimate.” Larchmont Buzz described one of her solo works as “a gut punch of raw emotion.”
Cooper’s professional performance credits include Off-Broadway, regional theatre, Walt Disney World, Universal Studios, the Hollywood Fringe Festival, and international stages. Among her favorite roles are Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly!, Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Musetta in La Bohème, Johanna in Sweeney Todd, and Nellie Forbush in South Pacific, among many others. Her favorite directing credits include Beehive, The Drowsy Chaperone, Company, The Threepenny Opera, To Remain Out of Darkness, and the world premiere opera Carcinos. She has performed, directed, and taught on three different continents and is sought after for her expertise in musical theatre performance, pedagogy, and the future of the art form. Her original music is available on all major streaming platforms.
Cooper joins Drake University as an Associate Professor of Musical Theatre and an associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. She comes to Drake after nine years at Augustana College, where she built and directed the college’s Musical Theatre concentration. Her previous teaching appointments include the University of Central Florida and Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand, where she developed the only university-level musical theatre program in Southeast Asia.
Her students have gone on to professional careers on Broadway, Off-Broadway, the West End, and in leading regional and international theatres, with credits including Hamilton, Aladdin, Elf, The Who’s Tommy, Smash, The Great Gatsby, Flashdance, The Donna Summer Story, The Wizard of Oz, Rock of Ages, Holiday Inn, La Cage aux Folles, In the Mood, and the West End revival of Miss Saigon. Her students have also performed in the Hong Kong production of The Lion King and the Austrian and German productions of Tarzan and Legally Blonde, as well as The Bodyguard. Among her other regional credits, Cooper has mentored students who have gone on to serve as music directors for the most recent revival of Pippin, American Psycho, and the Disney Princess – The Concert series, as well as to become the personal music director for Jeremy Jordan. Countless former students have gone on to participate in professional workshops and developmental productions that are now being produced, reflecting Cooper’s commitment to preparing artists for the realities and possibilities of a continually evolving musical theatre industry.
As an artist and educator, Cooper is passionate about cross-cultural communication, solo theatre, the diverse styles and traditions of musical theatre, and fostering the development of whole, curious, and resilient artists. Her career as both a working theatre artist and educator reflects a commitment to expanding the possibilities of musical theatre while preparing the next generation of artists to shape its future.
