Photo by Jessica Osber
I’m funny, intense and outrageous; a storyteller with a sardonic point of view; a creative who thrives on connecting with my audience as well as all the players along the way. My zany exuberance, tenacious passion and particular brand of smarts help me bring rich multi-layered characters to life from the words on the page.
LATEST & UPCOMING PROJECTS
some Recent highlights…
WINTER 2023 | In The Stillness of Night At The Tank
Poster design by Hoda Ramy @hodaillustrations
FALL 2023 | Deep Fake At The Hudson Guild Theatre
Behold the many faces of Brenda Stepford Kent, a self-obsessed movie star grappling with the effects of aging and her husband’s lack of emotion. What a treat it was to get to play this outspoken powerful character - a woman who knows exactly what she wants - in DEEP FAKE, a new full-length ensemble comedy by Christian Hanway and Joe Skoff (Wolf Lake Productions)
WINTER 2023 | 26th Annual Black Box New Play Festival At The Gallery Players
Happy to be back at The Gallery Players for WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACKS, a light comedy by Vicki Riba Koestler, upon the live on-stage return of their Annual Black Box New Play Festival!
Photos by Steven Pisano
SPRING 2022 | #SoSadSoSexy At The Tank
“...an excellent Esra Dayani creates impressively distinct characters as Izzy's mother and her nurse…”
-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards, Thinking Theater NYC
Grab your tickets to come see me in #SoSadSoSexy, a brand new work written and created by Emily Cordes, Alison Leaf and Kendra Augustin.
Directed by and with additional contributions from Simha Toledano
Presented by Tapestry Collective on March 24th and 26th at The Tank.
fALL 2021 | Mia
In November I had the opportunity to work on a project with a subject matter close to my heart: breast cancer. Handan Ozbilgin directed MIA by Catalina Florescu at HERE Arts Center ; along with the theme of how breast cancer affects women, their physical & emotional selves and their relationships, this play also explored societal norms around sisterhood, gender roles, western medicine, religion and grief.
It was my first time being on stage and in front of an audience since quarantine, and it was a special journey having lost my own mother to breast cancer in 2016.
fALL 2020 | Reading with The Writer’s Rock
A’hoy Mateys! Argh’ot to play a variety of unsavory pirate figures in JOLIE ROUGE, a brand new hip-hop pirate musical by Cindy Parrish (developed through Gina Stevensen’s The Writers Rock - an amazing crew of fabulous playwrights).
It was some major cavorting and carousing on the high seas in this radical piece about the infamous female pirates Anne Bonny & Mary Read. I played CAPTAIN CHARLES JOHNSON, a rather pompous author of THE book about pirate life! I also got to play a ‘FLEMISH PIRATE CAPTAIN’ (picture the Swedish Chef meets ‘pyrate’ and the world’s fastest off-camera Zoom costume change) which was a hoot if I do say so myself!
SUMMER 2020 | premiere reading: 45 dreams
“When two patients bring in dreams about Donald Trump, Dr. Jacqueline Axelrod is set on a journey into the collective unconscious that threatens her own grip on reality.”
I had the distinct pleasure of playing Dr. Jacqueline Axelrod in James Masten’s eerily timely new play 45 DREAMS: THE GREATEST, MOST WONDERFUL PLAY EVER. The play, based on the work of psychotherapist Martha Crawford who analyzed ordinary people’s dreams of Donald Trump, was darkly comic; along with us actors was a disturbingly hilarious puppet named “DT.”
Check out the interview about Crawford’s Trump Dreams Project in The New Yorker.
SUMMER 2020 | Planet Connections Zoom FesT
I played Olympe de Gouge in NOTES FROM THE NEW WORLD a new work about four infamous women in history who stood up for what they believed in, despite the consequences. #Olympewasbeheaded #butshespokeforthepeople
Loved getting to dive into the research on this French Revolutionary playwright AND I got to use my French accent. Oh oui je l'ai fait!