Cast of This Living Hand

JANA MESTECKY (Nancy Webster) is a Founding Company Member of Crescent City Stage. With CCS Virtual Reading Series:  A Doll’s House, Macbeth, Uncle Vanya and The Importance of Being Earnest.  After two decades in New York City, Jana has found her a new home in New Orleans this past year. She has appeared with companies on stages across the country including the Astoria Symphonic Choir, The New Group, Cherry Lane Theatre, The Mint, The Gene Frankel Theatre, Lincoln Center Festival, Ernie Martin Studio Theatre, DR2. Playhouse on Park, Shakespeare and Co (Paris), The Players Club, Little Light Productions, and the Bleecker Street Theatre. She has also been a resident company member of The New Globe Theatre Inc., the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis’ Imaginary Theatre Company, and now Crescent City Stage. Her work extended beyond the stage to include television, film and commercial work nationally and internationally. In addition to her BA in French and Theatre, she holds an MFA in Acting from the Actors Studio Drama School at New School University and has studied at The American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, Théâtre des Cinquantes in Paris, France, and The Actors Studio in New York City. Her other passion is teaching where she has held positions as Chair of the Performing Arts at The Spence School (NYC) in addition to other appointments at St. John’s University, The Birch Wathen Lenox School, The Buckley School, and Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Carré (New Orleans). She is a member of the professional unions AEA and SAG-AFTRA.

LIZ ELKINS NEWCOMER (Julie Hall) is a Founding Company Member of CCS.  With CCS Virtual Reading Series: A Doll’s House, Uncle Vanya and The Importance of Being Earnest.  Theatre Credits: Off-Broadway World Premiere of Sea of Tranquility (Atlantic Theater Company), The Deception (La Jolla Playhouse / Theatre de la Jeune Lune), LoveSick (59E59Theaters), and The Fox (George Frankel Theatre).  Liz has an MFA in Theatre from UCSD, where she performed in Pericles, Good Breeding, The Love of the Nightingale and Gum.  She received a BFA with Honors from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied at the Atlantic Theater Company Acting School and Stella Adler Studio of Acting.  Film/T.V. Credits: SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture for Black Panther, Breaking News in Yuba County, Assassination Nation, Out of Blue, Bad Moms, Award-Winning Short Film Harry Grows Up, NCIS: New Orleans, Army Wives, and Mercy.  She is a proud member of AEA and SAG-AFTRA.  Liz is also a Certified Enneagram Teacher, and offers individual sessions and workshops as owner of Art of the Enneagram.  

MICHAEL A. NEWCOMER (Mark Webster) is a founding company member of CCS.  With CCS Virtual Reading Series:  Uncle Vanya, The Importance of Being Earnest, Macbeth and A Doll’s House.  Michael has had the great fortune to participate in …

MICHAEL A. NEWCOMER (Mark Webster) is a founding company member of CCS.  With CCS Virtual Reading Series:  Uncle Vanya, The Importance of Being Earnest, Macbeth and A Doll’s House.  Michael has had the great fortune to participate in two JAW Festivals with Portland Center Stage, working on six new plays as they went through development to staged readings.  Additionally, Michael had the opportunity to take one of those plays to its world premiere at the Humana Festival at Actor’s Theatre of Louisville (Tall Grass Gothic by Melanie Marnich).  Work-shopping, developing, and performing in new works is a highlight for any actor, and Michael has been fortunate enough to work on three world premieres and several more regional premieres.  For all the work that is fit to print on his career, visit www.michaelanewcomer.com. Proud AEA and #FairWageOnStage advocate.

DR. JOHN (RAY) PROCTOR (Host) is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Tulane University, where he teaches Intermediate Acting, Advanced, African American Theatre History, and Theatre for Social Justice. He holds a BA in English from Webster University, an MFA in Acting from West Virginia University, and a Ph. D. in Theatre Research from the University of Wisconsin Madison. This past Summer played Colonel Brandon in the Reno Little Theatre’s production of Sense and Sensibility. He has also played Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet (Organic Theatre/Chicago), Peter in Lorraine Hansberry's Les Blancs (Madison Repertory Theatre), Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (Arizona Repertory Theatre), the title role of Othello in Othello (The Greenbriar), Here in New Orleans he has appeared on the Southern Rep stage in Airline Highway and Father Come Home from the Wars (Southern Rep). Dr. Proctor has also co-authored (with Ms. Olivia Dawson) the play - Out Loud, which opened at eta Creative Arts Foundation on Chicago's south side. That play received seven 2014 Black Theatre Alliance nominations for Best Play, Best New Script, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Ensemble. He is a featured contributor in the forthcoming essay collection Adaptations and Translations of Shakespeare: Race as Text, which will be published in November. Last February Dr. Proctor interviewed, Pulitzer prize winning playwright, Lynn Nottage, here at Tulane University.  Also in November, Professor Proctor will direct The Colored Museum for the Storyville Theatre Collective, which will open at the Stella Jones Contemporary Gallery of African-American Art. This coming Spring he will direct A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Tulane University, Department of Theatre and Dance.

DAVID RYAN SMITH (Jonathan Meyers): Broadway: One Man, Two Guvnors; Passing Strange. Off Broadway: Where We Stand (The Women's Project); Passage (Soho Rep); A Midsummer Night's Dream  Henry V, Twelfth Night, Romeo & Juliet, The Comedy of Errors, Pericles (The Public Theater), Gone Missing (City Center/Encores! Off Center), Mankind (Playwrights Horizons), The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (Signature Theater), The Glory of the World (BAM), #9 (59E59); The Rover (NY Classical Theater); Marat/Sade (Classical Theater of Harlem). Regional: Repertory Theater of Saint Louis, Shakespeare Theater Company, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Actors Theater of Louisville, Barrington Stage, American Conservatory Theater, Dallas Theater Center, Triad Stage, Crossroads Theater Company, California Shakespeare Theater, etc. Film: The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Medal of Victory, Bee Season. CCS Virtual Reading Series:  Macbeth. Education: MFA, American Conservatory Theater, BFA University of Evansville.

RICHARD VETERE (Playwright) has over twenty published and produced plays. Published by Dramatic Publishing, Applause Books and Smith & Kraus including Machiavelli, Gangster Apparel; Caravaggio; One Shot, One Kill and the recently published Zaglada. His work has been produced at Primary Stages (NYC), The Old Red Lion (London), Silk Road Crossing (Chicago), Archlight Off-Broadway NYC. His published novels include The Third Miracle (Simon & Schuster) and he co-wrote the screenplay adaptation starring Ed Harris, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, directed by Agniezka Holland. He adapted his stage play The Marriage Fool for CBS TV Films and it starred Walter Matthau and Carol Burnett. His teleplay adaptation of his stage play Hale The Hero! starring Elisabeth Shue earned rave reviews on the General Motors Playwrights Theater on A&E. His other published novels include Champagne and Cocaine and The Writers Afterlife both from Three Rooms Press and the award winning The White Envelope and I, Human both from the Amazin’ Whodunit Press. He wrote the cult class film Vigilante named by BAM as one of the Best Indies of the 80s. He taught playwright and film writing in the master’s program at NYU has three published books of poetry and holds a master’s degree from Columbia University in Comparative English Literature. He is a member of Poets & Writers; Authors Guild, Dramatist Guild and a Lifetime and Current Member of the WGA East. His website is RichardVetereauthor.com