Broadway dreams come true for Roswell native and ‘Operation Mincemeat’ star Jessi Kirtley

When a teenage Jessi Kirtley forgot her song lyrics in front of a panel of judges, she thought she had completely blown her chances at winning an award.

“I was so nervous! I didn’t remember any of the words to ‘Practically Perfect’ from Mary Poppins, [a role] I had just played,” Kirtley says.

Despite the snafu, she left the 2019 Georgia High School Musical Theatre Awards — colloquially known as the Shulers — with a trophy for Best Leading Actress. Now starring in Operation Mincemeat on Broadway, Kirtley looks back on that win as the boost she needed to chase her dream of making it to The Great White Way.

A Roswell native, Kirtley began her performing career at Mountain Park Elementary School. Her interest in theater was sparked even earlier at age 3, when she saw her brother on the elementary school stage.

“I would run around the house in fairy wings, singing all of the Tinkerbell stuff that I had just discovered. And then I would just bug my parents [asking], ‘Can I do the musical? Can I get singing lessons? Can I get dancing lessons?’”

She trained almost exclusively in Roswell, from theater camps at the Recreation and Parks Department to dance lessons at Tolbert Yilmaz School of Dance. As much as she bugged her parents about classes, Kirtley says the public school musicals were the easiest “yes” for their family.

“I could just stay after school a couple extra hours, and it didn’t really cost any money,” she explains. “So because of that, my core [education in] theater was the after-school musicals.” Impressively, she says she never missed a single musical at Mountain Park Elementary, Crabapple Middle or Roswell High.

Her award for Mary Poppins came when she played the iconic nanny at Roswell High School as a Junior. Kirtley had won as a supporting performer the previous year, but it was the Best Leading Actress win that earned her a trip to New York City to compete against students from across the country in the national Jimmy Awards. 

Produced by The Broadway League, the governing body over Broadway’s Tony Awards, Kirtley says “The Jimmys” were a fun, if intense, experience. 

“You have the top kids from the entire country competing for money and scholarships,” she says. “Now, [an award is] not just a trophy — it’s an opportunity. The feedback is really intense, and there are a lot of eyes on you.” 

As the Jimmys website boasts, many former winners have gone on to successful careers on Broadway, so the pressure was no small thing. But the payoff was worth it.

“It was a huge boost in my career,” says Kirtley, who placed as a finalist. “They were able to connect me with casting directors and agents before I was even going to college.”

Less than a year after graduating from Baldwin Wallace University, Kirtley’s Broadway dreams came true when she joined Operation Mincemeat as an understudy. She then took over the role of “Jean Leslie and others” this past February. 

Mincemeat tells a wild, true story from World War II in which a corpse was used to smuggle fake military plans for MI5. While each of the five cast members has a primary role, they jump into multiple minor roles, constantly changing costumes (and accents) throughout the performance.

“It’s extremely exhilarating,” Kirtley says. “As an actor, it’s the most rewarding show that you can be in — doing something so huge with just five people.”

Though Broadway may seem a far cry from her after-school musical days, you could say Kirtley trained for the small cast format with her Roswell theater friends.

“I’ve been very nostalgic about all of the videos that I made with my friends and doing huge ensemble shows with just 10 people,” she says. “That was really the foundation for why I love a show like Operation Mincemeat, with everybody working together and doing what they can. That’s really what it was like doing theater at home.”  

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A theater nerd with a passion for telling people’s stories, Sally Fuller also spent every childhood summer at Roswell Rec’s theater camps. Her writing has appeared in Encore Atlanta, City Lifestyle magazine and the AJC, among others. When not writing, she works at her dream job as a mother alongside the best husband and father in the world.