How Carey Renee Sharpe Went From Nurse To Off-Broadway Star

Carey Renee Sharpe just wanted to throw an epic Halloween party. She had no idea it’d turn into a show with an afterlife all of its own.

Her 2019 fete — a black-tie vampire ball, complete with original music and a fashion show — inspired what eventually would become Blood/Love, a vampire pop-rock opera playing now through May 10 at New York City’s Theater555, with an album of its songs arriving April 24.

Sharpe, who co-wrote the show with Dru DeCaro, stars as Valerie, who becomes the world’s first vampire after ditching the devil at the altar. After an eternity of a mostly isolated existence with her two fellow immortal friends, Valerie finds her world upended after she meets a guitarist who made an unholy pact to achieve rock star fame.

And what’s more enduring, in the pop culture sense, than a vampire? A musical adaptation of the 1987 film The Lost Boys is about to open on Broadway, while Cynthia Erivo is playing Dracula across the pond in London. In the past few years alone, there has been Interview With the Vampire, the blood-sucking absurdities of What We Do in the Shadows, and the new take on Nosferatu. Sharpe understands the appeal.

“I always say they’re literally eternal,” the 42-year-old singer-songwriter says over Zoom on a recent Thursday afternoon. “They’re cool and sexy, and everybody is intrigued by the thought of living forever. They’re just something that we all could kind of relate to — it’s that piece of mortality that feels so daunting. Like, ‘What if that was lifted from my shoulders?’”

A classically trained violinist who began playing at age 3, Sharpe spent more than a decade as a nurse and nurse practitioner before deciding to step away from the field — a move motivated by the burnout many health care workers endure, but also because she loved writing and performing. Blood/Love gave her the perfect way to sink her teeth in.

“I have never really felt that comfortable performing and singing as Carey, so I created Valerie,” she says. “I sometimes call her my Lady Gaga, because she allows me to step into a character, but sing my songs.”

On writing for Valerie:

Dru and I wrote all the music together — we always joke like it really is like a group project. And we very rarely write without each other, so this really has been very collaborative. I don’t even know if I would have admitted it at the time, but I had not sang or performed for almost two decades when I started writing this. And I just wanted to sing again. A lot of these songs are about my personal life. You wouldn’t know that in the show, but they are.

I’ve done a lot of things I’m very proud of, but something was missing for me. And going on a journey to find that in my own life has led me to this point. I think that that’s very relatable with Valerie’s character — she’s done things for 1,000 years, but she’s still longing for something more. And I think that’s a really relatable problem for a lot of us, particularly once you start to hit the age where you’re like, “Well, time is not forever — what do I want to do with my time left?” She’s kind of a heightened version of that.

On pre-show emo music:

On my way over to the theater, I will usually listen to my emo warm-up playlist, because I’ve got to work myself into the headspace of being able to belt these emo rock songs. I listen to Heart; I love Evanescence — Evanescence inspired a song in the show — there’s Paramore; there’s those ’80s, ’90s female rockers that I like to listen to. They get me in that mood.

On dressing-room Diet Pepsi:

It’s definitely a Carey space, not a Valerie space. I’ve got cute drawings from my kids and I’ve got a ton of snacks. Anybody who knows me knows I’m obsessed with Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi, so I always have that on hand. But I like to keep it very organized. So anything that I’m not using is not in that room. Everything has its place, and, you know, you just got to keep it organized.

On day-off theater excursions:

I try to see as many shows as I can. I became dear friends with Keri René Fuller, who’s in Wicked right now, because she did our workshop in October. I got to see her finally yesterday as Elphaba, which was really special. We saw Lost Boys on Tuesday — it was really fun to go see the other vampires. The show is quite a spectacle. And then I really just try to lie low. I’m only doing six shows a week, which is not even as crazy as the full Broadway schedule, but it’s a lot. So you’ve got to take care of yourself. I do a lot of Pilates, and I try to do that as much as I can.

On “rock-and-roll” postshow rituals:

I’ve been watching Outlander lately. I’m not a big TV person, but by the time I get home, it’s kind of late and I don’t want to go to bed yet, so I just watch some TV. And I know we’re in musical theater and you’re not supposed to dry out your vocal cords, but I just need a little nightcap at the end of the night. I’m more rock and roll, that’s what I always say. So I usually have a little whiskey nightcap and watch Outlander and have some sort of dessert, because I can’t eat right before the show. So I have, like, Oreos. That’s probably the worst after-show ritual, but it seems to be working for me.