John Robert Tillotson

John Robert Tillotson (2023) has been a globe-trotting theatre professional for 45-years working in major theatres throughout the United States and Canada, as well as Europe. His most recent play, All Men Do It: A Primer (2023) is a contemporary non-opera, based on Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto to Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte. He is the author of twelve inter-related short plays included in the play cycle Theatrikals: Project: Bairbre (produced by Nomad Theatrical), The Face of Heaven (produced by the Attic Theatre), and The Peter Plays (produced by the Clark Family Fund). He was a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts/City Artists Corps grant to present #ChekhovBurlesk: Scenes from Theatrikal Life (2021), seven monologues adapted from Chekhov's short stories and plays. His screenplay, Phoebe Flips the Bird (2021) part of the Pandemic Microfilm series. He is a staff writer for the Nomad Theatrical/ Working Theater collaboration Butterfly Effect NYC/Hell's Kitchen (2021)..His pandemic play Mickey and Max (2020) was presented in outdoor venues in NYC and filmed in performance. Other work includes Independence Day: An New Play to Pay Old Debt (2019) a Michael Warren Powell Memorial Reading recipient. He performed his one-man autobiographical play, Residual Effects, (2018) at the Hudson Guild Theatre. Recent short play productions include On the Harmfulness of Electronic Devices in the Theatre: A Tutorial (Louisville Improvisers), You Afraid (29th Street Playwrights Collective), Summer Play Contest (Write Now 2018) and The Contemplation of Cupid (Villages Playwrights 2018). As a director, his most recent work was seen off-Broadway in the New Ambassadors’ production of David Adam Gill’s Experimenting with Katz, at TheaterLab. He has staged productions of Much Ado about Nothing (Savage Rose/Louisville, KY), Ball Boys & Now Departing (Manhattan Stage), and NYC workshops of The Marriage Equality Plays by Jeffrey Vause, Measure4Measure, the small things, Staircase, and Not about Heroes. As an actor, he has performed on Broadway in the Manhattan Theatre Club production of Enemy of the People and Off-Broadway in Strictly Dishonorable (The Attic Theater @ The Flea), La Mama, Mint Theater, Pearl Theatre, York Theatre, John Houseman?s The Acting Company and the Public Theater. In Europe, he played Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at Frankfurt and Vienna’ s English Theatres and starred in Ken Hill?s operetta Phantom of the Opera in Berlin and throughout Germany, as well as stops in Zurich, Amsterdam and an extended engagement at Paris’ famed Opera-Comique. His US regional theatre performances include roles at The Guthrie Theater (Amadeus), The Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington, DC (The Imaginary Invalid, Love?s Labor’s Lost, Pericles), McCarter Theatre (Indians, Comedy of Errors, A Christmas Carol), The Kennedy Center, Washington, DC (Boy Meets Girl), Great Lakes Theatre Festival, Cleveland, Cincinnati Playhouse, The Utah Shakespearean Festival (A Midsummer Night?s Dream, Waiting for Godot, Romeo and Juliet), Alabama Shakespeare Festival ( A Bold Stroke for a Wife, The Tempest, As You Like It, You Never Can Tell and the North American premiere of Tom Stoppard and Andre Previn?s musical Rough Crossing), as well as numerous other resident companies including Long Wharf Theatre, Triad Stage, Weston Playhouse, Barrington Stage Co., Cleveland Playhouse and the Pioneer Theatre Company. He toured North America in James Hammerstein’s production of The Sound of Music as Uncle Max opposite Marie Osmond, Cyrano de Bergerac opposite John Cullum and as Santa Claus in The Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular starring the Rockettes. His film appearances include the Academy award nominated Anna and Die Hard with a Vengeance, and on television in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. (06112023)