2003-2005
“Sometimes you have to start small,
climbing the tiniest wall…”
— Stephen Sondheim,
Anyone Can Whistle
When I moved to New York in September of 2003, I had no idea what I was doing.
A typical headshot costs less than a buck, but my first copy — the kind of high-quality print you’d hang on a wall — set me back $35. I didn't know where to look for a flexible day job or an affordable apartment. I had no idea how to secure a good agent — or a bad one.
My one professional contact was a major New York casting director named Will Cantler.
"What should I do?" I asked Will. "What are you above?" he replied.
It was a fair point.
a clip from Checkout
CHECKOUT
Student Film (Short)
September 8-10, 2003 (Principal Photography)
written and directed by Matt Shapiro
Role: Arnold
New York University, Undergraduate Thesis Film
Director Matt Shapiro had seen me in a play at Princeton, and invited me to audition.
I played opposite Erica Rhodes, now a successful standup comic.
For three consecutive nights, we shot on location in a Philadelphia supermarket, then cleared out each morning moments before the first customers arrived. By the end, I was physically and emotionally exhausted — but then, so was my character.
WAITING FOR LEFTY
Production
by Clifford Odets, dir. Ben Mathews
with Ben Mathews
Role: Miller
The Knitting Factory
It feels appropriate that my first show as a New York actor was Waiting For Lefty, an anthem to progressive politics.
It’s a theme I’d return to in HOME/SICK (2011) and That Poor Dream (2014), and in my 2019 Broadway debut, What the Constitution Means To Me.
It’s also a driving force behind many of my favorite playwrights, including Suzan Lori-Parks, Tony Kushner, and Caryl Churchill.
director Ben Matthews
TWELFTH NIGHT
Production
January 28-February 8, 2004
by William Shakespeare, dir. Michael Hagins
Role: Sebastian
Waterloo Bridge Playhouse
My first of four Twelfth Nights.
The following year, Legitimate Theater Company invited me to direct the play. Months later, though, they told me I’d need to stage it as a drinking game, and I bowed out — but stuck around to dramaturge.
I played Orsino the following fall, and finally directed the show in summer 2007.
In 2011, called back twice for Malvolio in a celebrated Pig Iron production, I nearly booked a fifth one.
A clip from Gwen44
GWEN44
Student Film (Short)
January 28-February 1, 2004 (Principal Photography)
written and directed by Jammy Yoon
with Jammy Yoon
School of Visual Arts
Jammy and I would reunite for Among Thieves in September 2004 and Rust in December 2005.
Jammy is a devout Christian. Though the storylines he explored — in this case, a young guy reeling from a breakup — were pretty standard stuff for a student filmmaker, the underlying questions about faith in a secular world were anything but.
SEGWAY - "WORLD'S GREATEST INVENTION"
Commercial (Regional)
February 2004
Role: Scientist
I booked this spot after my friend Ellie Kemper introduced me to casting directors Brooke Thomas and Mary Egan.
Five years later, Ellie booked a major recurring role on The Office, and I never heard from her again.
POWERLESS
Staged Reading
March 2, 2004
by Marli Guzzetta, dir. Meredith Lucio
with Traci Godfrey, Julie Leedes, and Stephen Wheeler
Role: Jim
Tex in the City @ Red
Two women meet on a remote island and find themselves powerless to resist each other. They are, however, perfectly capable of resisting my character, Jim.
Fifteen years later, director/producer Meredith Lucio would become the resident producer for my theater company, The Assembly. We hadn’t spoken for over a decade.
actor Julie Leedes
actor Traci Godfrey
producer Meredith Lucio
a clip from Snowball
SNOWBALL
Student Film (Short)
March 15-18, 2004 (Principal Photography)
written and directed by Jaime Vaca
Role: The Reporter
New York Film Academy
In a movie about how rumors can spin out of control, there's bound to be a sleazy reporter involved.
Thomas and Misha in Andy and Edie
ANDY AND EDIE
Production
June 3-13, 2004
by Peter Braunstein, dir. Jess Rotondi
with Ethan Aranoff, Thomas Blake (Andy Warhol), Morgan Breen, Lee Briggs, Bettina Bryant, Sarah Bunker, Pat Caesar, Adam Cohen, Bryan Rucker, and Misha Sedgwick (Edie Sedgwick)
Role: George Plimpton
The Shetler Theater
A troubled production about a troubled pair: Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick.
The New York Post reported that movie star Jennifer Garner was originally slated to play the lead. (Not true, we later learned.) The role eventually went to Misha Sedgwick, who claimed she was Edie Sedgwick's niece. (Also untrue.)
Due to our unstable writer/producer, Peter Braunstein, we lost our original theater (The CSV Milagro) and our original director (Robert Saxon). Frustrated she’d never been paid, our costume designer absconded with all our costumes, so hours before our first performance, the cast pulled clothing from our own closets for the show.
Sixteen months after we closed, Peter — who’d never paid the cast and creative team — ended up on the front page of The New York Post for a violent crime against a defenseless woman. It sparked a media frenzy and even inspired an episode of CSI (as you can read here).
In June 2019, during my Broadway debut, I spoke onstage about what Peter had done.
WANNABE
Independent Film (Short)
June 24, 2004 (Principal Photography)
Role: "Pope" Ondine
dir. Frances Bathory
Weeks after Andy and Edie closed, I shot Wannabe with some of my castmates. The film relates the sad, true story of a Warhol starlet left to die when she OD’d at a party.
We took home first prize at the Chicago Underground Film Festival.
It All goes in
Independent Film (Short)
July 10-12, 2004 (Principal Photography)
written and directed by Coy Byron
I played a racist businessman who doesn’t trust the Asian cooks not to put dog in the meal.
The film took home Best Original Story at the Asian-American Film Festival.
MACBETH
Production
August 13-29, 2004
by William Shakespeare, dir. Sherry Saab
with Farah Bala (Lady Macbeth), Sinem Balkir, Daryl Brown, Robert Dioguardi, Russell Hankins, Alison Kerrington, Michael Menger (Banquo), Wole Parks, Jenni Peterson, Melissa Silver, and Paul Swinnerton (Macbeth)
Roles: Duncan, First Murderer, Seyton
The Willful Company @ The Actors Theater
"It was never clear who were the crazies and who were the sane ones," one critic wrote about our production, set in an insane asylum.
That turned out to be an apt description of the rehearsal process as well.
Reviews: The Off Off Broadway Review
CRAZY FACE CRAZY
Independent Film (Short)
August 16, 2004 (Principal Photography)
written and directed by Coy Byron
I played a drag queen with a wig of pink plastic and a heart of gold.
I've portrayed a lot of ladies over the years, including Thisbe in Midsummer, Salome in The Bible (Abridged), a new bride in A People, Miss Havisham in That Poor Dream, and Mrs. Bumbrake in Peter and the Starcatcher.
I think it’s the eyelashes.
filmmaker Coy Byron
actor Jenn Marie Jones
BUCK WILD
Student Film (Short)
August 30-September 2, 2004 (Principal Photography)
written and directed by Brett Rebel
with Jenn Marie Jones
Role: Ben
New York University, Undergraduate Thesis Film
A love triangle between a young man, his long-suffering girlfriend, and his toy horse.
Given the casual misogyny of the typical student film, it’s not surprising who wins out.
THE SAINTS SPEAK
Television
September 14, 2004 (Principal Photography)
dir. Stephen Payne and Richard Payne
Role: Saint Louis Marie de Montfort
Eternal Word Television Network
In my early days in New York, I responded to every casting notice for which I was remotely appropriate, so maybe it's unsurprising I ended up playing a 18th-century French saint for Catholic TV.
Clip from Among Thieves
AMONG THIEVES
Student Film (Feature)
September 25-October 1, 2004 (Principal Photography)
written and directed by Jammy Yoon
Role: Ponce
School of Visual Arts
A dystopian sci-fi epic.
I decided that my character was the product of an illicit liaison between a human and an alien. His unique manner of speaking and moving - not quite reflective of one species or the other - set him apart from an early age. Seen as “too human” by his fellow aliens and as “too alien” by his fellow humans, he’d spent his life in relative isolation, and developed a profound sense of empathy for other outsiders and misfits.
The writer/director agreed with exactly none of this.
Ben (left) with the cast of Eternity: Time Without End
ETERNITY: TIME WITHOUT END
Production
October 7-19, 2004
written and directed by Duncan Pflaster
with Ari Benjamin, Brendan Burke, Jon Crefeld, Joe Fanelli, Carlos Rafael Fernandez, Alexandra Finger, Jena Tesse Fox, Paula Galloway, Clara Barton Green, Erik Sisco, Jason Specland
Role: Mac
Cross-Eyed Bear Productions @ The Greenwich Street Theater
Like Harry Beaton in Brigadoon, Mac is the sole malcontent in a magical world that is, for others, a paradise.
TINY DYNAMITE
Production
December 3-12, 2004
by Richard Lovejoy, dir. Brad Raimondo
Roles: Bryan, Barker, Grace
The Legitimate Theater Company and Dreamscape Theater Company
@ Collective: Unconscious
A comedy about a woman who decides to kill herself — then proceeds to live the most fulfilling year of her life.
ROMEO AND JULIET
Production
December 17-18, 2004
by William Shakespeare, dir. Tammy Tunyavongs
with Jonathan Bourne (Friar Laurence), Adam Danoff (Tybalt), Erwin Falcon (Mercutio), Heather Massie (Juliet), Kimberly Rae Miller (Nurse), and Kimberly Stowell (Capulet)
Role: Romeo
Theatre-Studio, Inc.
Cutting Shakespeare's "two hours' traffic" to a breathless seventy minutes, we set about staging what was left of the play.
Since seven-twelfths of infinity is still infinity, working on our abridged Romeo and Juliet was still intermittently transcendent.
Our Nurse, Mercutio, and Capulet backstage at Theatre-Studio, Inc.
the Japanese title card for The World’s Astonishing News!
The WORLD'S ASTONISHING NEWS! -
"THE WOMEN WHO LOVED A MURDERER"
Television
February 3-4, 2005 (Principal Photography)
Role: Assistant Detective
Nippon TV (Japan)
If nobody knew me in New York, at least I was big in Japan.
An East Asian answer to America's Most Wanted, World's Astonishing News mostly chronicles true crime stories from the U.S. The show is written in Japanese, filmed in poorly translated English, and later dubbed into Japanese.
They aren't exactly Shakespeare.
THEY'RE ALL GONNA GET IT
Student Film (Short)
February 20, 2005 (Principal Photography)
written and directed by Nick Ordway
New York University, MFA Film
A good friend from college, Nick and I still meet up from time to time to check out art films at Film Forum or The Anjelika.
They're All Going To Get It was a semi-improvised noir shot in broad daylight with a handheld camera.
filmmaker Nick Ordway
a scene from Not Enough Princesses
NOT ENOUGH PRINCESSES
Workshop Production
March 4, 2005
directed by Shari Johnson
The Looking Glass Theater
My first devised play, a collaboratively created children's show based on Swedish fairy tales.
The piece premiered seven months later, while I was on the road with Sleepy Hollow.
The New York Times' review of that production (available here) captures the low-key, off-beat charm of what we'd developed.
WORK/DREAM
Workshop Production
April 13, 2005
conceived and directed by Bryn Manion and Wendy Remington
Aisling Arts @ The Astoria Undercroft
My second exposure to devised theater, a method of collaborative play development in which performers join directors — and sometimes designers and playwrights — in creating a work of theater.
Bryn and Wendy had studied with SITI Company, and their work, like SITI's, was collaboratively developed, formally experimental and highly physical.
Gilligan Stump (in blue) was the candidate in Vote Stump
VOTE STUMP
Independent Film (Feature)
May 8, 2005 (Principal Photography)
improvised by the cast, dir. Dave Lawler
with Joseph Langham
Base on the long-running stage show “Gilligan Stump & Tha Perfesser,” Vote Stump featured a pot-smoking hillbilly running for president.
One advantage of doing low-budget student films over low-budget indie films, I discovered, is that student films are more likely to be completed. (Student directors who want to graduate turn in their final cut on time.)
Vote Stump was a lot of fun to shoot, but the film itself never materialized.
HARDER THAN TEETH
Independent Film (Short)
conceived and directed by Erich Sturm
with Anouk Dutruit
Role: The Husband
Harder Than Teeth consists of a single scene: a husband and wife brushing their teeth together.
It's weirdly long, startlingly aggressive, and kind of riveting.
THE BIBLE (THE COMPLETE WORD OF GOD): ABRIDGED
Production
June 7-24, 2005
by The Reduced Shakespeare Company, dir. John Healey
with Aaron Philips
Roles: Eve, Salome, Mary, Matt
Theater at Lime Kiln
From the guys who created The Complete Works of Shakespeare: Abridged, The Bible (The Complete Word of God): Abridged was even sillier project based on an even longer text.
I played more or less every woman in the Bible.
SING DOWN THE MOON
Production (Musical)
June 28-July 30, 2005
by Mary Hall Surface (book, lyrics) and David Maddox (lyrics, music)
dir. John Healey
with Aaron Phillips
Role: Jack
Theater at Lime Kiln
My first musical in over two years.
In high school and college, I'd appeared in over a dozen musicals, but after moving to New York, I concentrated on plays.
In 2014, I started singing again regularly, and in 2023, I’ll finally premiere a musical of my own.
TWELFTH NIGHT
Production
September 1-25, 2005
by William Shakespeare, dir. Bryn Manion and Wendy Remington
with Nicole Watson
Role: Orsino
Aisling Arts @ public parks in New York City
We performed in public parks in every one of New York's five boroughs.
We had no artificial lighting, and as the days got shorter towards the end of our run, we had to cut scenes to make sure we'd be done before sundown.
BURY THE DEAD
Benefit Performance
September 19, 2005
by Irwin Shaw, dir. Randall Stuart
with Lindsey Andersen, Elizabeth Amari, Andrew Arno, Tom Bain, Lucas Beck, Kathryn Blume, Bob Bollweg, David Buttarro, Kathleen Chalfant, Buck Henry, Victor Khodadad, Mary Jo McConnell, Denis O'Hare, Enrique Rivas, Mark Tafoya, Jonathan Tindle, Eric Walton and Mary Beth Worley
Role: Colonel Elwell
Upon These Boards @ Cooper Union
As a young actor in New York, I felt impossibly distant from writers and actors who had "made it".
So working with Buck Henry (The Graduate), Denis O'Hare (Take Me Out), and Kathleen Chalfant (Angels in America, Wit) — all artists I deeply admired — meant a lot to me.
Meaningful too was mounting a response to America’s senseless war in Iraq.
two scenes from Bury The Dead
playwright Doric Wilson
AND HE MADE A HER
Staged Reading
September 20, 2005
by Doric Wilson, dir. Bryn Manion
with Eric C. Bailey and Brad Wells
Role: Disenchantralista
Peculiar Works Project @ The Cornelia Street Cafe
Doric Wilson — who loved our reading — was "a playwright whose satirical, wisecracking works are considered bricks in the foundations of the Off Off Broadway and gay theater movements," as The New York Times put it in his obituary.
A year later, Doric reached out to me about reprising Disenchantralista ("an angel of conservative cant") in a revival of the play. Unfortunately, I wasn’t available.
FORCE: THRESHOLD
Staged Reading
September 25, 2005
written and directed by Bryn Manion
Aisling Arts @ Manhattan Theater Source
My fourth project with Bryn Manion.
The Force Trilogy was eventually nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
PARABLE
Television
October 2, 2005 (Principal Photography)
dir. Stephen Payne and Richard Payne
Role: Saint John Chrysostom
Arcadia Films for Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN)
As in The Saints Speak series, I was once again speaking the words of a Catholic saint straight to camera.
This time, my text came from John Chrysostom, a conservative 5th-century archbishop. His uncritical emphasis on ecclesiastical authority unsettled me — but not as much as the director’s comment that abortion was the “greatest genocide of the 20th century.”
I had a different perspective on what had been the greatest genocide of the 20th century — and on the Church that had been complicit in it.
SLEEPY HOLLOW
Production (Musical - Regional Tour)
October 4-October 30, 2005
dir. John Healey
with Morgan Gengo and April Usarski
Role: Ichabod Crane
Theater at Lime Kiln
Morgan, April and I toured through several schools in southwestern Virginia with this musical adaptation of Washington Irving's famous story.
The theater went bankrupt a month later. (I'm almost positive it wasn't our fault.)
THE WAIT
Student Film (Short)
written and directed by Rosa Bordallo
Role: The Boyfriend
New York University, Undergraduate Film
Student films tend to reflect the personal lives of student filmmakers, and I’d imagine this one, about an insecure young woman waiting for her boyfriend to call, was no exception.
Of the six student filmmakers I worked with, Rosa was one of only two women.
INTELLIGENT OFFICE - "NOT IT"
Commercial (Regional)
November 19, 2005
dir. Matt Ballen
with Fiona Choi and Raul Dedos
After meeting on this commercial, director Matt Ballen and I talked for years about shooting a short film he'd written. The funding never materialized, but Matt did eventually bring me in for The Onion News Network.
RUST
Student Film (Feature)
December 2005 (Principal Photography)
written and directed by Jammy Yoon)
School of Visual Arts
For the third time, Jammy cast me as the best friend of the protagonist.
(For the first time, that protagonist was played by someone other than Jammy himself.)