2018-2019
“Look at what you've done
Then at what you want
Not at where you are
What you'll be”
— Stephen Sondheim,
Sunday in the Park With George
Flying back to New York after seven months on tour, I hurtled into two projects with The Assembly: acting in an epic theatrical experiment at La Mama and writing book and lyrics for an ambitious original musical.
Then, suddenly, the momentum stopped. My manager dropped me — after fifteen months collecting commission without securing me a single audition. Weeks later, my wife became associate artistic director of a major LORT theater — and left town for two years.
Then in August 2018 — after more emails, calls, and meetings than I can count — I finally secured first-rate representation.
And that November, after spending the fall canvassing for the midterm elections, I was invited to join Heidi Schreck’s What The Constitution Means To Me, which soon became a massive Broadway hit. (The two months between Constitution’s Off Broadway and Broadway runs left just enough time to premiere a great new Itamar Moses play at the Denver Center.)
By late June, I’d made my Broadway debut, delivering a performance — and a monologue I’d written myself — on a Broadway stage.
SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS
First National Tour
August 28, 2017-March 4, 2018
by Bess Wohl, dir. Rachel Chavkin
with Connor Barrett, Edward Chin-Lyn, Orville Mendoza, Brenna Palughi, Socorro Santiago and Cherene Snow
Role: Ned
August 30-September 24:
Long Wharf Theater (New Haven, CT)
October 11-December 10:
American Conservatory Theater (San Francisco, CA)
January 11-January 28:
The Broad Stage (Los Angeles, CA)
February 16-March 4:
Arscht Center (Miami, FL)
The first time my face appeared on a billboard, the first time I performed nightly in a major national tour, Small Mouth Sounds also marked my first time playing the same part for over 100 performances in a row.
When you do the same play for months, your muscle memory eventually kicks in, and it becomes difficult to experience each moment for the first time, as the character does. (In this one respect, understudying is easier: the actor, like the character, gets only a single shot at getting it right.)
To keep things fresh, I meditated before every performance — the perfect warmup for a play about a silent meditation retreat — and continually tweaked a pre-show playlist that kept me emotionally raw. I also listened closely to the rest of the tour’s stellar cast in order to stay, as Small Mouth Sounds’ unseen guru might say, “present.”
Beth’s play is largely wordless, except a six-minute monologue I had which runs the gamut from hilarious to agonized. That speech, and the play in general, exists on a knife’s edge between the ridiculous and the sublime.
Finding that tone, night after night, was a serious challenge, and an incredible gift.
HOLIDAYS IN/COYOTE
Production
January 14-20, 2018
by Adam Burnett, dir. Jess Chayes
with Lani Fu, Jayne Houdyshell, Sam Gonzalez, Manny Rivera, Kate Schroeder and Richard Thieriot
Role: The Pool
The Tank
Mounted while I was in LA with Small Mouth Sounds, Holidays In/Coyote featured, in addition to a live cast, a number of pre-recorded characters who presided godlike over a Holidome in Topeka, Kansas. Obie- and Tony-winner Jane Houdyshell voiced The Great Ghost Earth, while I played The Pool — high as hell and dreaming hazily of "the water beneath the water".
Directed by Jess Chayes, the film was shot and edited by video designer David Pym.
In TimeOut NY, Helen Shaw praised Richard Theriot’s “purely wonderful performance” and the play’s “geologic time scale—a glacier slowly comes and carries the hotel complex away—[that] strikes a interesting combined note of despair and non-anthropocentric hope.”
playwright LM Feldman
THRIVE, OR WHAT YOU WILL
Workshop (Regional)
February 12, 2018
by LM Feldman, dir. Maura Krause
Role: Philibert Commerson
The day before flying to Miami for Small Mouth Sounds, I took a bus down to Philly for Thrive’s first public reading.
HACKBERRY ROAD
Closed Reading
March 14, 2018
by Gary Winter, dir. Meghan Finn
with Christine Anglin (Tamara), Jack Frederick, Andrea Morales (Lorena) and Christian Roberson
Role: Captain Jimmy
The Tank
When Captain Jimmy asks his friends to watch a teenager from Honduras for a few days until her new employers can pick her up, they learn how easy it is to become complicit in exploiting refugees in a world that leaves those escaping violence with limited options.
Andrea Morales played a child refugee in Hackberry Road.
Elena McGhee, Chris Hurt, Rolls Andre, and Ben; costumes by Kate Fry
Seagullmachine
Production
April 14-May 5, 2018
by Anton Chekhov and Heiner Muller, dir. Jess Chayes and Nick Benacerraf
with Rolls Andre (Shamrayev), Edward Bauer (Medvedenko), Marvin Bell (Sorin), Emily Caffery (Maid), Nehassaiu deGannes (Arkadina), Anna Elliott (Masha), Christopher Hurt (Dorn), Jax Jackson (Konstantin), Layla Khosh (Nina), Daniel Maseda (Servant), Elena McGhee (Paulina), and Gabrielle Resende (Cook)
Role: Trigorin
The Assembly @ La Mama
Arguably The Assembly’s most ambitious project to date, Seagullmachine smashed together two classic theatrical texts in unexpected ways.
We played through Chekhov’s The Seagull in near-entirety, with occasional nightmarish interruptions from Muller’s text, until at last hamletmachine burst forth, devouring the seminal 19th-century modern drama with 20th-century postmodern rage and nausea.
the broken'hearts of a corrupted white house
Workshop
April 23-26, 2018
by Matthew Paul Olmos, dir. Mia Rovegno
with Michael Billingsley, Eric Miller, Jose Joaquin Perez and Liz Ramos
Role: G. Gordon Liddy
Our first week-long workshop of Matt’s Watergate play featured a lot of new material, including the title.
Eric Miller, who played Nixon and others
playwright Amina Henry
Columbus street
Workshop
May 29, 2018
by Amina Henry, dir. Mia Rovegno
with Brian Coats, Danielle Davenport, Chad Goodridge and Amy Staats
Role: Allen Smith
The New Group
Muslims and Christians, white folks and black folks, in a small Midwestern town in the middle of the Trump era.
What could go wrong?
BARTLEBY IN THE CASTLE
Workshop
June 1-June 10, 2018
by BEN BECKLEY and Nate Weida, dir. Jess Chayes
with Ben Beckley, Lena Hudson, Jessica Frey, Anna Ishida, Jax Jackson, Melissa Mahoney, Emil McGloin, Ronald Peet, and Nate Weida
Role: Computer/Klamm
The Assembly @ Atlantic Theater Company
By the end of this workshop, we had forty pages of material. (A big step forward.)
a scene from Brooke O'Harra's OBIE Award-winning Drums of the Waves of Horikawa
x country
Reading
June 1-June 10, 2018
by Jordan Baum, dir. Brooke O'Harra
with Antonio Barrera, Mateo Correa, Maxwell Cosmo Cramer, Bráulio Cruz, Daniella De Jesús, Charlie Hurtt, Julia Jarcho, Modesto Flako Jimenez, Richard Lowenburg, Dan Peeples, Nicholas Sanchez and Bubba Weiler
Role: Langley
Clubbed Thumb
Jordan Baum — and I say this with profound respect — is a genuine weirdo, a guy deeply in touch with the oddities of human language and behavior, and unafraid to explore them through absurdism, theatrical impressionism, and even hyper-naturalism.
Theatrical innovator Brooke O’Harra was a great match for Jordan’s off-beat play, which is based on his experiences on a high school cross country team.
LIPSTICK LOBOTOMY
Workshop
July 10-18, 2018
by Krista Knight, dir. Jess Chayes
with Christine Donnelly, Morgan Green, Gavin Haag, Katie Kopajtic, Jose Ramos, Lauren Schaffel and Rajeev Varma
Roles: Dr. Berman, Stuart
Tres Brujas @ Alchemical Studios
In 1941, at an exclusive high-end sanitarium, Rosemary Kennedy befriends Ginny, the playwright’s great aunt.
When Rosemary is selected for an exciting new surgical procedure, Ginny does everything in her power to maintain their friendship, and her sanity.
Jess’ nuanced direction evoked both the playful wackiness and the deep yearning that define Krista’s remarkable depiction of an unforgettable friendship between two not-quite-broken women.
The fact that this play — which was featured on the 2019 Kilroy List — hasn’t yet been produced is a crime.
playwright Krista Knight
BARTLEBY IN THE CASTLE
Workshop
August 29, 2018
by Ben Beckley and Nate Weida, dir. Jess Chayes
with Lauren Annunziata (K), Ben Beckley (Computer/Titorelli), Bee Franklin, Jessica Frey (Pepi), Jax Jackson (Bartleby), Kuhoo Verma, and Nate Weida
Role: Computer/Titorelli
The Assembly @ Judson Church
Finally, we had something like a full draft of The Assembly’s first musical, soon to be retitled In Corpo.
A few key scenes had yet to be written, but for the first time, we could see the shape of the entire project.
Three for all
Closed Reading
October 14, 2018
by Greg Edwards and Timothy Cooper
with Susan Jacks
Roles: Zed, Sven, Older Investor, Worried Investor, Husky-Voiced Actor, Line-Stander #2, Vendor
Ripley Grier
I voiced seven roles for this closed-door reading of Greg and Timothy’s whiz-bang, madcap pilot.
Timothy Cooper
Greg Edwards
playwright Gaetano Marangelli
IRON COUNTY
Workshop
October 19, 2018
by Gaetano Marangelli, dir. Brendon DeMay
with Dan Cozzens, Noam Harary, Jake Hart and Graham Sack
Role: Sam
Reign or Shine Productions @ The Drama League
In rural Wisconsin, two brothers (Graham and I) yearn to go back to nature.
But nature will force them to change who they are into who they have to become to survive.
brut
Workshop
October 26, 2018
by Dominic Finocchiaro, dir. Gus Heagerty
with Stephen Bennett, Kathryn Lang, Keilly McQuail and Danielle Slavick
Role: Eli
The Drama Book Shop
From reading Complex in 2016, I knew Dominic Finocchiaro had an uncanny sense of the breathless, unsettling rhythm of contemporary urban New York. In Brut, he offers it in counterpoint to something very different: a struggling family in rural Ohio.
I played a ruthless music executive whose ambition to sign a mentally challenged savant brings him face-to-face with the small-town family he thought he had left behind forever.
Danielle and I would play opposite each other again a year later in Jordan.
actor Danielle Slavick
playwright Hillary Miller
get out hide out help out fight
Workshop
October 29, 2018
by Hillary Miller, dir. Kristjan Thor
with Sara Buffamanti, Christine Chang, Tracy Hazas, Luis Moreno, Gregg Mozgala, Jonathan Tindle
Role: Alex
The Bushwick Starr
A satirical take on a university theater program and an overeager active shooter preparatory program.
Hillary’s a professor at a university theater program herself, and intimately familiar with the challenges of consensus-based decision making and the absurdities of mandatory shooter drills.
What the constitution means to me
Production
December 4-30, 2018
by Heidi Schreck, dir. Oliver Butler
with Rosdely Ciprian, Mike Iveson, Heidi Schreck, and Thursday Williams
Role: Mel Yonkin (u/s)
New York Theatre Workshop @ The Greenwich House Theater
Nearly six months after reaching out to the casting director about my enthusiasm for What The Constitution Means To Me, she offered me an opportunity to join the critically acclaimed production for its third and final Off-Broadway extension.
Three months later, to everyone’s surprise, the show transferred to the Helen Hayes Theatre, where I made my Broadway debut.
Heidi Schreck in What The Constitution Means To Me
playwright Raquel Almazon
DOES THAT FEEL GOOD TO YOU, MY LARK?:
A doll’s house adaptation
Workshop
December 10, 2018
by Raquel Almazan, dir. Miranda Haymon
Role: Man Who Is a Husband (Torvald, Lucas Hnath)
The Bushwick Starr
Just as Sara Farrington had savaged Brecht’s feminist failings in The Brecht Play, Raquel eviscerates Ibsen’s in Does That Feel Good To You, My Lark?
I know Lucas Hnath, who wrote Doll’s House, Part 2, and when I was asked to take on the role of Lucas as the rest of the cast ritually murdered me, I was… surprised.
The Oresteia
Workshop
December 14, 2018
music by Nate Weida, lyrics and book by Nate Weida, Mia Hull, and Micah Bucey
with Lauren Annunziata, Bee Franklin, Ben Langhorst, Melissa Mahoney, Preston Martin, McLean Peterson, Paul Rescigno, Robbie Rescigno, and Nate Weida
Role: Aegisthus
Judson Church
Composer/lyricist/writer Nate Weida’s ambitious remix of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, with the bright young theatermaker Mia Hull and Judson Church’s minister/activist Micah Bucey providing additional material.
“My aunt was my mother/ Don’t ask me—it’s Greek,” sings Aegisthus. Classic.
center: composer/lyricist Nate Weida, relating the story of The Oresteia;
from left: Lauren Annunziata, Ronald Peet, Bailey Edwards, Mia Hull
playwright Eric Holmes
Mondo tragic
Workshop
December 16, 2018
by Eric Holmes, dir. Miranda Haymon
with Kieron Anthony, Toni Ann DeNoble, and Eric Holmes
Role: Sloan, Adam
National Black Theatre
A profoundly thoughtful take on the shockumentary travelogues known as Mondo films.
As Eric puts it, “Think Girls Gone Wild meets Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Sex stuff. Gross stuff. Blood stuff.”
Mondo Tragic pits Eric Holmes (a light-skinned black playwright who sometimes passes as white) against Rachel Dolezal (a white woman who infamously declared herself African-American). I played a clueless detective and a Manson-obsessed cinephile.
angel’s share
Reading
March 19-20, 2019
by Dominic Finocchiaro
with Cindy Cheung (Mom), Ethan Dubin (Stephen), and Mirirai Sithole (Counselor)
Role: Dad
The Lark
Cindy and I played a married couple who download the consciousness of our dead son into a stranger’s brain.
My character has increasing doubts about whether his grief can ever be overcome.
About the quality of this play and this cast, I had no doubts.
actor Cindy Cheung
Ben (foreground) and Karl Miller (background) in The Whistleblower
The Whistleblower
Production
February 15-March 10, 2019
by Itamar Moses, dir. Oliver Butler
with Bill Christ, Meredith Forlenza, Karl Miller, Leslie O'Carroll, Allison Jean White, and Landon G. Woodson
Role: Max
Denver Center for the Performing Arts
We staged the show in the round, with actors entering in from the voms, until an hour into the performance, when fog enveloped the stage, a trap door opened at center, and a boat rose from beneath the floorboards, with me at the wheel.
The play’s language was equally spectacular. Itamar’s first new play in six years and his first production since winning a Tony, The Whistleblower was both deeply personal and verbally pyrotechnic.
What the constitution means to me
Broadway Production
March 14-June 3, 2019
by Heidi Schreck, dir. Oliver Butler
with Rosdely Ciprian, Mike Iveson, Heidi Schreck, and Thursday Williams
Role: Mel Yonkin (u/s - perf)
Helen Hayes Theater (Broadway)
“It is not just the best play to open on Broadway so far this season,” raved The New York Times, “but also the most important.”
The set included hundreds of pictures of uniformed men. Among the dozens of real legionnaires featured were photos of original cast member Danny Wolohan, his replacement Mike Iveson, and me, as well as our director Oliver Butler.
In June, when Mike Iveson stepped out for a week to film West Side Story, I made my Broadway debut, with a monologue I’d written myself.
from up left: Danny Wolohan, Mike Iveson and Ben;
down right: director Oliver Butler
the broken’hearts of a corrupted white house
Workshop
March 19-20, 2019
by Matthew Paul Olmos, dir. dir. Mia Rovegno
with Brittany Bellizeare, Eric Miller, Luis Moreno, Alfredo Narciso, and Mariana Newhard
Role: G. Gordon Liddy
New Dramatists
Our second workshop of Matt’s Watergate play explored expressionistic staging that reflected the inner turmoil of E. Howard Hunt.
Bat kitty
Reading
April 5, 2019
by Amy Staats
with Tucker Aust, Ylfa Edelstein, Dawn McGee, Elizabeth Pepe, Shawn Randall, and Theresa Rose
Role: Marc
Atlantic Theater Company
A strange-looking kitty who may have supernatural powers transforms a young woman’s life — and leaves her skeptical boyfriend Marc reeling.
Amy had just had a play produced at The Atlantic, and this was her first reading of her latest one.
playwright Amy Staats
Francis Rabkin
Covenant
Reading
April 29, 2019
by Francis Rabkin, dir. Miranda Haymon
with Rachel Christopher, Kate Goehring, and Federico Rodriguez
Role: Thomas
New York Theatre Workshop
In mid-17th century England, reformers and revolutionaries threatened once-stable sociopolitical hierarchies.
I played the founder of the Diggers, radical egalitarian Protestants who were forerunners of modern anarchists.
You can hear their iconic 17th-century anthem (which I sang in the reading) here.
actor/producer Paten Hughes
Pandora’s BOx
AND
Earth SPIRIT
Reading
May 6, 2019
by Frank Wedekind, translated by Kai Maristed, dir. Tea Alagic
with Constantine Beecher, Paten Hughes, and Andi Stover
Role: Animal Tamer, Schwartz, Schoen
I’d seen the Alban Berg opera (starring the incredible Marlis Peterson) and G.W. Pabst’s silent film (starring the incredible Louise Brooks), but I’d never encountered their source material until Paten Hughes invited me to her apartment to read through a new translation of Wedekind’s Lulu plays.
director May Adrales
the broken'hearts of a corrupted white house
Workshop
May 17, 2019
by Matthew Paul Olmos, dir. May Adrales
with Michael Billingsley, Brittany Belizeare, Juan Concado, Luis Moreno, and Christina Pumariega
Role: G. Gordon Liddy
My first time in six years working with May. It was great to reconnect.
the broken'hearts of a corrupted white house
Workshop
June 11, 2019
by Matthew Paul Olmos, dir. Mia Rovegno
with Michael Billingsley, Brittany Belizeare, Juan Concado, and Luis Moreno
Role: G. Gordon Liddy
Mia, associate directing a hit New York revival of Sweeney Todd, had been unavailable in May, so we brought her up to speed on the latest draft.
director Mia Rovegno
IN CORPO
Workshop
June 28-June 30, 2019
by BEN BECKLEY and Nate Weida, dir. Jess Chayes
with Emily Caffery, RJ Christian, Cameron Franklin, Jessica Frey, Neal Gupta, Jax Jackson, Andrew Mueller, Brett Ashley Robinson, and Nate Weida
The same week I made my Broadway debut — with six near-consecutive performances of What The Constitution Means To Me — The Assembly produced a workshop of the first full draft of our Kafka/Melville musical, now retitled In Corpo.
JORDAN
Reading
July 16, 2019
by Brenda Withers, dir. Jess Chayes
with Sarah Chalfie, Edward Chin-Lyn, and Max Woertendyke
Northern Stage
When a woman’s social media accounts get hacked, she learns who the men in her life really believe she is, when no one is watching.
playwright Brenda Withers
playwright Dan McCabe
blame the parents
Reading
July 29, 2019
by Dan McCabe
with Helen Coxe, Rachel Lin and Sturgis Warner
Ensemble Studio Theatre
Sturgis played Rachel’s psychiatrist, and Helen and I her psychiatrist parents.
Married to a woman whose parents are both trained psychotherapists, I had a lot to draw on.
only yesterday
Recording
August 30, 2019
dir. Carol Dunne
with Tommy Crawford (Paul McCartney), Christopher Flockton, Olivia Swayze and Christopher Sears (John Lennon)
Northern Stage @ 59 East 59th
A young Paul McCartney and John Lennon, holed up in a Florida hotel, move on from writing wildly popular bubblegum Brit pop to something more personal.
In one of the transitions, over the horde of teenage girls, you could hear me as a beat cop struggling mightily to hold them all back.
The show ended up garnering a New York Times Critics’ Pick.
director Carol Dunne
What the constitution means to me
Touring Production
September 10-22, 2019
by Heidi Schreck, dir. Oliver Butler
with Rosdely Ciprian, Mike Iveson and Heidi Schreck
Role: Mel Yonkin (u/s)
The Kennedy Center
Essentially a two-week extension of our Broadway run.
the bad infinity
Independent Film
September 23-25, 2019
by Mac Wellman, dir. Graham Sack
with Jake Hart and Jocelyn Kuritsky
As Constitution was wrapping up at The Kennedy Center, Graham Sack reached out to me about a film adaptation of Max Wellman's The Bad Infinity.
I'm a big fan of Graham, best known for his experimental film of Lincoln in the Bardo, and of Mac, an experimental playwright who founded The Flea Theater and co-runs the MFA playwrighting program at Brooklyn College.
In three days of shooting, I played an existentially minded dog, a hard-working boom operator, and a
impeccably professional waiter who — after his co-workers murder and reanimate him — leads them in an angry dance.
I was washing the blood out of my beard for days.
JOrdan
World Premiere
October 16-November 3, 2019
by Brenda Withers, dir. Jess Chayes
with Eric M. Messner, Danielle Slavick and William Oliver Watkins
Northern Stage
My first show at Northern Stage, where Jess was serving as the BOLD associate artistic director.
The cellar
Reading
November 10, 2019
by Gaetano Marangelli, dir. Brendon DeMay
with Dan Cozzens (Drees) and Maya Lawson (Eva)
Role: Torstein
Reign or Shine Productions @ The Drama League
Three long-estranged siblings reunite in their dead father’s wine cellar.
director Brendon DeMay
actor Alfredo Narciso
the broken'hearts of a corrupted white house
Workshop
December 6, 2019
by Matthew Paul Olmos, dir. Mia Rovegno
with Nicole Aiken, Michael Billingsley, Alfredo Narciso, Eric Miller, and Christina Pumariega
Role: G. Gordon Liddy
The first public reading of Matt’s Watergate play, and our first since the House of Representatives had opened an impeachment inquiry.
Over my seven readings and workshops of broken'hearts at New Dramatists, Matt had shifted the center of the play from E. Howard Hunt, Watergate’s co-architect, to his wife Dorothy, “a woman sidelined by history, who stood up to The White House in 1972 and fought for families cast aside by their President.”
The two of them now wrestle for Hunt’s soul — and America’s.
fluff
Workshop
December 9, 2019
by Sigrid Gilmer, dir. Jaki Bradley
with Josh Bonzie, Emily Davis, Flora Diaz, Jinn Kim, Maria-Christina Oliveras, and Akyiaa Wilson
Role: John Brown
Seven strangers in a waiting room: a man named Becky, a woman named Matt, someone looking for love, someone demanding submission, someone kinda butch, someone kinda femme, and John Brown, who raided the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in 1959, setting off the Civil War.
Here’s Sigrid on the play’s origin: ”In my other writing life, I make TV. And I spend a great deal of time trapped in a room with other people, negotiating story and litigating sentences. This play is about me as a playwright - one who enjoys writing as a solitary and interior process - wrangling with a new creative model where groups of writers argue with each other about the color blue. Some days I long to be smothered to death.”
inventing anna
Television
Netflix
KING LEAR
Production
January 19-February 9, 2020
by William Shakespeare, dir. Stephen Brown-Fried
with Cherene Snow
Role: Cornwall
Northern Stage
playwright Sigrid Gilmer
director Jaki Bradley