The first time Joe Moeller sat in the balcony of Cincinnati’s Aronoff Center for the Arts, he wasn’t onstage. The then-young boy watching Thoroughly Modern Millie with his mother stared down at the stage and wondered what it might feel like to stand there himself.
Years later, he returned to that same stage as a lead actor.
When the curtain closed on Shucked’s Sunday performance in his hometown, Moeller’s full-circle moment was complete.
Moeller’s musical journey began in seventh grade, thanks to his sister, Nikki Fromm. She was running sound for St. Ursula’s production of The Music Man when she invited her younger brother to tag along.
“I had a friend get sick, so I asked Joe to come with me,” Fromm said.
Moeller barely remembers touching the soundboard.
“I don’t remember adjusting a single knob,” he said, laughing. “I just sat there and watched the show and became completely enamored. Seeing people transform into different characters right before your eyes. It just felt like the coolest thing in the world.”
Fromm remembers seeing her brother fall for theater.
“There are moments that define our lives,” she said. “That was one of them for Joe.”
By eighth grade, Moeller was onstage himself, joining the ensemble in The Sound of Music before landing the title role in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat later that year.
For the first time, his family heard him sing solo.
“My grandparents were like, ‘We need to get Joe voice lessons,’” Moeller said. “That was when it became real.”
With his family’s encouragement, he threw himself into musical theater at St. Xavier High School and later at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music.
Many CCM graduates land on Broadway quickly. Moeller took an alternative route.
Instead, he built his career the long way with regional theaters and then national tours. Within a year and a half of graduating, he booked his first tour, a milestone he once considered the ultimate goal.
“I was successful,” he said. “I made a living doing what I loved. Not everyone gets that, especially in theater.”
He worked consistently at regional theaters, including North Shore Music Theatre outside Boston and the now-closed Westchester Broadway Theatre in New York. When he joined the national tour of Mary Poppins, a dream show of his, he felt he had reached a new level.
But Broadway still lingered in the background.
“It was 10 years before I finally got there,” Moeller said. “By that point, I’d made peace with the idea that it might never happen.”
Then a friend texted him a dance audition video for & Juliet, asking for feedback.
“I was like, ‘What is this for? This is exactly what I do,’” he recalled. “Why don’t I have an audition for this?”
His agent had already tried to get him an audition. The production wasn’t interested.
Moeller recorded the material anyway and asked his agent to submit it on the off chance they’d accept his video.
They did. He was cast in his first Broadway show as a member of the ensemble.
“I cried the whole time watching him in & Juliet,” Fromm said.
Broadway, he quickly learned, is as unpredictable as it is glamorous. After his debut, he joined The Heart of Rock and Roll, the Huey Lewis musical that closed in 2024 after a short run.
“That’s the reality,” Moeller said. “Broadway is a commercial business.”
Still, he kept working. He worked as a member of the ensemble or an understudy. Roles he appreciated, but ones that didn’t always put him center stage.
“I trained to take on leading roles,” he said. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to be at the front of the stage, singing the song, having the moment.”
The opportunity came through a connection. His dance partner in The Heart of Rock and Roll, Robin Masella, associate choreographer for Shucked, connected him to the audition.
This time, he landed the role of storyteller 2 in the Tony Award-winning musical’s national tour, a leading part packed with rapid-fire dad jokes and high-energy narration.
“It’s my favorite role I’ve ever done,” Moeller said. “When I saw Grey Henson do it on Broadway in 2022, I remember thinking, ‘I would love to play that part.’ And now I get to do it.”
For Moeller, the role feels personal.
“I get to be a silly, gay comedian,” he said. “That’s who I am. It’s perfect.”
When the tour prepared to stop in Cincinnati, Moeller spent weeks hyping up his castmates.
“I told them, ‘You’re going to love the audiences here,’” he said. “Cincinnati didn’t disappoint.”
He describes the city as “farm-adjacent” and deeply rooted in the arts — a perfect match for Shucked’s corny humor and big-hearted storytelling.
But performing at the Aronoff meant more than just a strong crowd. This was a theater he had been able to work at once before in an ensemble, but now as a lead actor, it meant so much more.
“There’s something special about wanting to be out there for the kid sitting in the balcony,” he said. “The way I was.”
Fromm says the hometown pride runs deep.
“All of us feel it,” she said. “Joe getting the lead and doing what he loves in the place that made him who he is, that’s everything.”
Moeller agrees.
“Cincinnati is the kind of place where you’re from Cincinnati, even if you’re from Milford or Fairfield,” he said. “And when something good happens, the city rallies around you.”
On Sunday night, as the curtain fell and applause filled the Aronoff Theatre, Moeller stood center stage — no longer the kid in the balcony, but the performer under the lights.
Somewhere up there, another kid might have been watching, wondering what it felt like.