About our talent
New Place Players is a classical theater company with over twenty active members, comprised of the highest quality Equity actors and musicians, and our creative team includes some of the top names in the industry, actively working in NYC and the world over.
Check out our press page here or read below to learn more about us...
Creative Team
James Ortiz • Co-director/Puppet Design/Costume Design
Grace Laubacher is a scenic designer for theater and opera based in New York City. Her current and recent work includes designs for Santa Fe Opera (La Bohème, 2019), Opera Philadelphia / The Curtis Institute (Empty the House / Riders to the Sea, 2019), Kentucky Opera (Enemies, A Love Story, 2018), Underground Railway Theater (Guards at the Taj, 2018), Juilliard (Dido and Aeneas, 2019; La Finta Giardiniera, 2017), and Pacific Symphony (Aida, 2017). In the past year she has also collaborated with Walt Disney Creative Entertainment, the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, MA, and as an associate designer at the Roundabout and Huntington Theater Companies.
Some of my latest work includes: The Coronation of Poppea (dir. Robin Guarino, Florentine Opera, Milwaukee, WI 2019 ); Caroline, Or Change (dir. Kyle Pleasant, PPAS Musical Theater Professional Performing Arts School 2019); Dialogues of the Carmelites (dir. Sandy DeAthos-Meers College of Charleston, Charleston, SC 2019); City of No Illusions (dir. Paul Zimet, Talking Band LaMama, NYC 2019); This Tree (dir. Elena Heyman, Prototype Festival HERE Arts Center, NYC 2019).
Awards: United Scenic Artists Local 829 Award; 2019 Opera America Robert L.B. Tobin Director-Designer Showcase finalist; Henry Hewes nomination for LongYarn, 2016; Live Design Young Designer to Watch, 2014; USITT Lighting Design Award, 2011; Hangar Theater Lab Design Fellow.
Molly Seidel is a NYC based designer and artist. Off- Broadway: The Dressmaker’s Secret (59E59), The Woodsman (New World Stages, 59E59, PBS/ BroadwayHD); Regional: Ghost: The Musical (WPPAC), Heathers: The Musical (WPPAC, NY Regional Premiere), In The Heights (WPPAC, BroadwayWorld Award: Best Costume Design); Other Credits: Play Like a Winner (NYMF), Generation Me (NYMF), Buddhas are Screaming in China (Planet Connections Theatre Festivity, Outstanding Use of Special Effects Award), and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (New Place Players). Juilliard's Professional Intern Program in Costume Design. BFA in Fine Art, Ithaca College.
Our Actors
Aaron is an actor because he believes that theater and film have a great power to change, enlighten, and enliven people. Aaron’s main goal is catharsis; whether it be his or yours. Along with a BFA in Acting from SUNY Purchase, Aaron has also attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and Stephen F. Austin State University. Since graduating in 2011, Aaron has worked on two national tours with Aquila Theater Co. as Christian in Cyrano de Bergerac, Malcolm in Macbeth, and Gremio in The Taming of the Shrew. Other credits include Assistant Fight Choreographer for Newsies! The Musical, and puppeteering a life sized elephant (Harold) in Studio 42’s Miss Lilly Gets Boned.
Kate McManus is a New York City-based actor and singer, born and raised beneath the shadows of the Coloradan Rocky Mountains. She recently made her Off-Broadway debut as Sister James in John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize-winning Doubt, a Parable (ASDS Repertory Theatre). She trained at the Actors' Studio Drama School, where she received her MFA in Acting, where she is now a working finalist. Other New York credits include A View From the Bridge (Catherine), Proof (Catherine), Tiger Tail (Baby Doll), Savage in Limbo (Linda) and Riff Raff (Billy “Torch” Murphy). Film roles include leads in One Take More (Hanging Lantern Productions), Free Wine (NYU), Acceptance (SVA) and Crossing Routes (SVA). Kate aspires every day to be a bit more like Captain America and Captain Kirk. She owes her family everything. Love and Green Light.
Katie Muldowney is a New York City based actor with an MFA in acting from the Actors' Studio Drama School; a BA in Theater and Anthropology from Washington College and a Certificate in Acting from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. A North Carolina native. An Honorary Park City, UT ‘local’ - Katie has also had the privilege of working with the Royal Shakespeare Company and performing in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
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Hailing from North Carolina, Adam fell into theatre at an early age. He began studying at performing arts magnet schools, and later pursued his theatrical interests in the many community and professional theatres of the culturally rich Raleigh-Durham area. At the age of eighteen, he followed a childhood friend to Boston, MA to continue his studies at Emerson College, where he obtained a BFA in Acting. Since graduating, Adam has had many opportunities to work regionally and continue his studies at such institutions as Massachusetts’ Shakespeare & Company and New York City’s Linklater Center. He currently resides in Manhattan with his husband and a tiny cat named Rock Hudson. Favorite credits include Island (New York Shakespeare Exchange), To Kill a Mockingbird (Burning Coal Theatre), Elephants and Gold (Berkshire Fringe), Titus Andronicus (Bare Theatre), Hamlet, and As You Like It (Plimoth Players).
Maria Argentina Souza is a New York City based actor originally from Columbus, IN. Maria holds a BFA from Purdue University and is a 2008 graduate of The Summer Professional Training Program at The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey as an Acting Apprentice. She has since had the pleasure of performing across the United States. Maria originated the roles of Lucinda in The History of Cardenio with Hoosier Bard Productions as well as Lily Booker in the world premiere of Current Economic Conditions: A Comedy at The Phoenix Theatre, both in Indianapolis, IN. Additional Regional credits include: Juliet (Romeo and Juliet), Antigone (The Theban Plays), Eliza Doolittle (Pygmalion), Liz (ReEntry), Adriana (The Comedy of Errors), Ophelia (Hamlet), and Libby (Blue Window). Maria thanks her outstanding family for their continued love and support. What a piece of work is man.
Benjamin Lee Stanford is a New York City based actor and singer, originally from Melbourne, Australia. In 2015, eager to tackle the greatest performance challenges and opportunities available to him, Benjamin moved to the United States and began his Acting MFA at the Actors' Studio Drama School at Pace University.
Benjamin’s regional theatre credits in Australia have included the role of Lewis in Louis Nowra’s Cosi for the Kew Court House Arts Association, and Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest for the OTG Theatre Company. While studying at ASDS, under the direction of renowned acting teachers such as Susan Aston, Benjamin’s favourite educational theatre credits at ASDS have included The Seagull by Anton Chekhov (Konstantin), Orphans by Lyle Kessler (Phillip), Time Flies by David Ives (Sir David Attenborough) and Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O’Neill (Orin). In 2018, Benjamin will feature in the Actors' Studio Drama School Repertory Season’s production of Marc Camoletti’s Boeing, Boeing in the role of Bernard.
John Wahl is an Eagle Scout and a graduate of the University of Maryland where he has appeared in Everything in the Garden; The Coronation of the Walrus King; The Seagull; Am I Black Enough, Yet?; and American, African. Outside of the University, John has appeared at the Kennedy Center’s Theatre Lab in a Broadway cabaret for The Millennium Stage Presents series, as well as performing in a master class with Barbara Cook for the Kennedy Center’s donors. He also appeared as Mark Twain in the devised theatrical work The Measure of our Lives at the National Portrait Gallery, worked with the Pallas Theatre Collective on the Criss-Cross Cabaret and The Comedy of Mirrors at the Capital Fringe Festival, reprised his role in American, African at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and made his New York debut at the Gene Frankel Theatre in I Do Wonder. He is humbled to be working with such peerless performers and artists.
Our Musicians
As a soloist, Mundy has given critically acclaimed performances of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, Boulez's Le Marteau sans Maître, Feldman's Three Voices and Messiaen's Poemes Pour Mí. She has performed programs for solo voice and electronics for presenters including Qubit Collective, the Open Ears Festival and Constellation, Chicago, and acoustic programs with piano or guitar at the Center for New Music (San Francisco), Montclair State University, Bay Chamber Festival, and the Brooklyn Historical Society.
Mundy is especially passionate about interdisciplinary work. She acted and sang in A Star Has Burnt My Eye at the BAM Next Wave Festival and Power of Emotion at the Public Theatre’s Under the Radar Festival, understudied Ashley Fure’s opera for objects, The Force of Things, presented by Lincoln Center, danced while singing music by Kaija Saariaho, Karin Rehnqvist, John Cage and Morton Feldman with New Chamber Ballet, wrote and performed music for a dance by Julia Bengtsson that was presented by Periapsis Dance series, performed as a roving musician in Martin Creed’s 2016 installation, The Back Door, at the Park Avenue Armory, performed a staged, memorized version of David Lang's Little Match Girl Passion at the Metropolitan Museum, sang John Cage's Songbook and Julius Eastman's Macle with the legendary SEM ensemble in Poland.
Mundy regularly "slays the thorniest material like it's nothing" (WQXR) with TAK ensemble, whose debut album, Ecstatic Music, was listed as a top 10 classical recording of 2016 by the Boston Globe. She hosted weekday afternoons on Q2music, a Peabody Award-winning affiliate of WQXR dedicated to contemporary music, from 2012-16.
Mundy holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music's Contemporary Performance Program, where she studied with Lucy Shelton, and the University of Toronto Faculty of Music.
When not making music she enjoys running, biking, reading, and going to see experimental theatre, independent film and visual art.
She also loves it when people join her mailing list and follow her on instagram!
In an era when music is consumed disembodied and piecemeal via low-fi digital streams, Herrera has created a countercultural multimedia experience that combines a beloved Latin American literary source, a keen-eyed photographer/designer, and a supremely gifted international cast of musical explorers. Inspired by Maqroll El Gaviero, a beloved nautical character whose picaresque adventures turned Colombian diplomat and poet Álvaro Mutis into a Latin American literary icon, Gaviero is the work of an artist eagerly investigating breathtaking new sonic territory.
Born in Colombia and raised in Venezuela, Herrera graduated from Boston’s Berklee College of Music in 1997. In 2000 he established himself on the New York music scene over the next few years.
Herrera has been an essential collaborator with some of the era’s definitive voices in jazz and world music, including Chilean vocalist Claudia Acuña, Colombian singer/songwriter Marta Gomez, Oaxacan-American vocalist Lila Downs, and Argentine singer Sofia Rei. He’s performed and recorded with international heavyweights such as Mercedes Sosa, The Chieftains, Branford Marsalis, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Alejandro Sanz, and Idan Raichel, among others.
With Gaviero, his fourth album, Herrera has once again set out for new territory, bringing together players, images, and music to create something evocative of realms glanced at but not seen, whispered about but not heard.
Nikolett was born in Budapest, Hungary. When she was 6 years old, she started to play the piano and took classical piano lessons for eight years. She played the flute as well and was a member of several drama societies. She went to the Ferenc Erkel music school in Budapest (major in jazz vocal), and with two fellow guitar players she formed a band called Jazzstand. They played in small clubs in Budapest and performed at a well-known local Hungarian festival called Valley of Arts. Later on, she accepted an invitation from a drummer in 2008 to form a jazz quartet called Under Pressure. Since 1999, she played the lead role in a Hungarian musical for five years at the Margit Foldessy Drama Studio. Being in that Hungarian musical called Képzelt Riport Egy Amerikai Popfesztiválról (An Imaginary Report on an American Pop Festival), gave her the opportunity in 2007 to perform at the Sziget festival, one of the largest annual music festivals in Europe, with one of the most famous Hungarian singer-songwriters, Gabor Presser. In 2010, she joined the group Soulfood. Soon after that she moved to New York. She studied for a year at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and transferred to City College in 2011. Nikolett has formed an acoustic band in New York. They perform under her name and play Jazz and Hungarian tunes. The beauty and uniqueness of Hungarian rhythms and melodies make them easy to be merged with jazz and folkloric music.
Now, two years later, Sari is breaking new ground with her sophomore album, Never Say Never. Sari insisted that the album be recorded live to capture the raw energy of her music. She has ventured deeper into her personal life. In the process, Sari has revealed herself with a vulnerability and honesty that she admits was as painful as it was healing. Her songs are highly crafted with vibrant lyrics that highlight just how good Sari is at invoking passion, grit, and empathy.
Sari’s success comes after years trudging the rugged road of life of the hard-working Blues woman. From her humble beginnings, working the music scene in the legendary fierce South Bronx of New York and on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, to a performance at Carnegie Hall, the operatically trained tornado stood her ground as a phenomenal Blues-Rock singer who would not be denied.
Sari’s home is her suitcase and her path has always taken her on the road less traveled. Her life is a story of never giving up, being true to yourself and pursuing your passions against all odds. It’s a story that is incredibly inspirational and a reminder why we should Never Say Never!
© 2019 New Place Players