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Abby Anderson (Rosalind) is thrilled to be back at North Dakota Shakespeare Festival! At NDSF: The Merchant of Venice (Portia) and The Tempest (Miranda/Antonia). Other credits include the Idaho Shakespeare Festival touring production of Twelfth Night (Malvolio), Vanities (Mary) at Bristol Valley Theater, Steel Magnolias (Shelby) at Forestburgh Playhouse, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Truly Scrumptious) at Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre, and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Joanna) at Sierra Repertory Theatre. MFA: Southern Miss. BFA: Rider University.
Stephanie Faatz Murry (Founder/Producing Artistic Director & Celia/Audrey/Lord) is currently a Denver-based theatre artist, teaching, directing and performing in the Denver/Boulder area. She holds a B.F.A. in Musical Theatre from SUNY Fredonia, an M.F.A. in Acting from the University of Arkansas and a certificate in Classical Acting from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). She is thrilled to share her love of classical theatre with the ND/MN community for a 9th season! Keep up with her theatrical adventures at www.stephaniefaatzmurry.com.
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Tyler Folkedahl (Duke Senior/Charles/Corwin/Lord) Bio coming soon!
Veronica Folkedahl (Phoebe/Duke Frederick/Oliver) Bio coming soon!
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Michael Matthys* (Touchstone/Adam/Silvius/Hymen/Jaques de Boys) is an AEA actor that got his professional start as part of the acting company at the Guthrie Theater under Garland Wright. While there, he played Treplev in The Seagull which to this day is one of his most memorable experiences. Shakespearean roles include Launcelot Gobbo in last season's The Merchant of Venice, Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet (LA Shakespeare Festival), Angelo in Off the Rails (an adaptation of Measure for Measure with Native Voices), Solanio in The Merchant of Venice (Guthrie Lab), Jacques in As You Like It (A Noise Within) and most recently Albany in King Lear (Rubicon). He has also assayed Valentine, Grumio, Oberon, Toby Belch, Florizel, the Player King, Aufidius, and one of the witches in Macbeth. Yes indeed, Shakespeare is one of his favorite things to do. He may be most well known for playing Dr. Kent on Grey's Anatomy. He has appeared in the feature films Full Blast, Nightwatch, Stan the Man, House of Deadly Secrets, BASEketball, and Nightwatch. He is the Assistant Professor of Acting and Voice at USD.
*appearing courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association
Erin O'Neil (Musician/Amiens/William/Attendant) was born and raised in East Grand Forks, MN. She sang and danced along with her parents from an early age, learning to clog dance at age three and to fiddle at age five. By the time she was eleven years old, Erin had composed her first fiddle tune and was playing for community dances and performing with her parents as a member of The O’Neil Family Band. Erin's first role in a play was at the Heritage Christmas Festival in East Grand Forks when she was four. She began summer theatre in fourth grade, and she was active in East Grand Forks middle school and high school productions. Erin continued on to become a traveling instructor for Summer Arts Stages and is often seen as a musician for North Country Fiddle and Dance. Tune and song making is a way of life for Erin. She plays and sings for the world around her, wherever she might happen to be. In theatre productions, she has played the fiddle as a narrator character in a production of Tom Sawyer, as Jennie Mae in the play, The Diviners, and in puppet shows for the Firehall Theatre in Grand Forks, ND. Two of Erin’s tunes were featured in North Dakota Shakespeare’s summer 2021 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Erin is honored to be a part of this year's North Dakota Shakespeare season.
Erin has also appeared as a fiddler in the Duluth-based band, Ninety To The Dozen, at Tapestry Folkdance Center in Minneapolis, MN, in Manitou, Manitoba at coffee house gatherings, and serendipitously at Erin’s Pub in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Emily Taylor (Costume Designer) currently resides in Minot, North Dakota on the land her family homesteaded in 1890. She graduated from UND’s M.A. Theatre Program in 2017, the same year that North Dakota Shakespeare got its start. She worked as the Costume Shop Manager that year as well as playing Lady Montague and is excited to come back and design this year’s production of As You Like It! She has kept busy costuming for Minot Summer Theatre, The Shakespeare Project (in Anniston, Alabama), and working on specialty projects for the Discovery Center and Norsk Hostfest.
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Curt L. Tofteland (Director) is a North Dakota native raised in Martin. He is a 1974 graduate of the University of North Dakota with a BFA in Music (vocal performance) and additional concentrations in theatre and creative writing (poetry). He received his MFA in Acting from the University of Minnesota in 1978. As a professional director and an Equity actor, he has 200+ professional productions to his credit. Additionally, he has presented 400+ performances of his one man show Shakespeare’s Clownes: A Foole’s Guide to Shakespeare. During his twenty year tenure as the Producing Artistic Director of Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, he produced fifty Shakespeare productions, directed twenty-five, and acted in eight. As the Founder of the internationally acclaimed Shakespeare Behind Bars program, he produced and directed fourteen all male Shakespeare plays. SBB is the subject of the multiple award-winning documentary by Philomath Films which premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and traveled to 40+ international film festivals winning 11 awards. Philomath Films and SBB have reunited and are in production for a second documentary - Shakespeare Beyond Bars. For his work as a prison arts practitioner, he has been awarded two Fulbright Fellowships, two Doctor of Humane Letters from Oakland University and Bellarmine University, a University of Auckland Creative Fellow, a Petra Foundation Fellow, and the Sidney Burger Award from the Shakespeare Theatre Association. He is an often published essayist and poet. https://shakespearebehindbars.org/about/staff/#Curt
Chris Zou (Orlando) is ecstatic to be back at NDSF after last season's co-production of The Merchant of Venice (Morocco/Tubal/Duke) with SDSF! This is his first lead role, ever! Previous theater credits include Twelfth Night at University of Houston (Orsino), Love's Labour's Lost at Fiasco Theater (Boyet), It's a Small World at Bristol Valley Theater (Adam), and Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey (Conrade). MFA in Acting from University of Houston, BFA in Film & TV from NYU. Thank you for seeing our show! Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo.