- I am now down in the land of fast horses and slow pours (that’s Bourbon) for the 42nd Annual Humana Festival of New Plays at The Actors Theatre of Louisville, appearing in Susan Soon He Stanton’s newest work, We, The Invisibles, directed by Mr. Dámaso Rodriguez.The Humana Festival runs thorough early April, so please: c’mon down!
- Currently (2017) you can find me at The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in sunny Ashland Oregon, where I am appearing in two shows:
The U.S. premiere of (the stage adaptation of the film) Shakespeare in Love (and yes, I am playing Shakespeare) and also an actual play by Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor.
I’ll be in the Pacific Northwest through October, so please do come on by!
Also a lot has happened since I last updated this website. So let’s get caught up:
- After a very long gestation period my one-man show finally got off the ground.
Apparently all I needed was an amazing co-writer, whom I found in the form of Yale alum and current Shades of Blue (yes, the J-Lo cop show) star Elia Monte-Brown. The show is called Origin Story and it is entirely autobiographical, deeply personal, and well…this video probably explains it best:
And thanks to my incredible collaborators, Anne Cecelia Haney, Elia Monte-Brown, & Old Sound Room, Origin Story was nominated for two New York Innovative Theatre Awards (Outstanding Solo Performance & Outstanding Original Full-Length Script). The awards aren’t until September 2017, so stay tuned.
- The APA (Audio Publishers Association) honored me by making me a finalist for the for the 2017 Audie Award for Best Male Narrator for my work on Ben H. Winter‘s Underground Airlines (which also happened to be my very first audiobook).
In light of everything happening with HBO’s in-development alternate-history-slavery-still-exists series, Confederate, Underground Airlines seems even more relevant than it did a year ago at publication.
While I cannot speak to the motives of anyone involved in Confederate, I can say that Ben Winters did the research, acknowledged his predecessors in the genre, and wrote with empathy, and ultimately made an extremely compelling work of fiction– of which I am very proud to be a part.
Ben has a lot more to say about the book, it’s creation, the inspiration behind it, and ways to get involved in the ongoing struggle for civil rights; if you’re curious, please follow the link and have a look at his site.
- AUDM, a new app bringing you narrated long-form journalism.
I started working with them at the end of 2016. I was thrilled to be asked to narrate Ta-Nehisi Coates beautiful piece for The Atlantic, My President Was Black, a stirring eulogy for the Obama administration (you can find an audio clip in the Media section of this site). Since that first piece for the Atlantic, Audm has thrown all manner of articles my way; on topics as varied as the Alt Right, the Haitian Zombie problem (it’s real!!), and Florida’s frog-pocalypse.
- The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, AKA the Negro Book of the Dead, by Suzan-Lori Parks, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz at Signature Theatre.
Lileana just won a best directing OBIE for our show!
- THE OUTS, season 2, Vimeo Original Programming.
The brain-child of Adam Goldman, the Outs is a very honest, often funny, and heartfelt look at millennial dating in New York, mostly from a queer perspective.
- Person of Interest, CBS Primetime.
My first Primetime top-of-show guest-star. I’ll be running a weed dispensary and Jim Caviezel has to come save my butt from the big bad, played by Winston Duke. Winston was with me at Yale, and now he’s going to be in BLACK PANTHER!!!
OLD NEWS:
- Well, October in the Chair is back from Amsterdam and we’re making our off-Broadway debut to sold-out houses.
What else are you going to do this Halloween? Get your tickets here.
“Old Sound Room is getting the ensemble dynamic in a way so many well-meaning collectives are failing to.”
Thank you, StageBuddy for the great review, and thank you Christopher Ash for the great photo.
William DeMeritt as “October”
- I, as a member of OSR Theatre Ensemble will be going to the Amsterdam Fringe Festival this September, where we will be debuting our new show, October in the Chair & Other Fragile Things. Based on short stories by Neil Gaiman, October in the Chair is sixty magical minutes of the absurdist humor, macabre mayhem, unlikely happenings, & bittersweet longings that only Neil Gaiman can create.
If you miss the show in Amsterdam, come see us in NEW YORK CITY this October, at the American Theater of Actors as part of The ARACA Project.
And my feature film debut, HBO’s Emmy-Winning, The Normal Heart based on Larry Kramer’s Tony award-winning play, will be available on DVD & Blu-Ray August 26th.
