Michael Schantz

Michael Schantz is a New York based actor and director whose work has been seen throughout the country and abroad. His screen credits include The History of Sound (directed by Oliver Hermanus, Cannes), FBI (CBS), Power Book III: Raising Kanan (Starz), Three Women (Starz), City on a Hill (Showtime), The Blacklist (NBC), Wu-Tang: An American Saga (Hulu), including many independent feature and short films. Onstage he has worked with Wheelhouse Theatre Company; Life Sucks (Off-Broadway Alliance award for Best Play) and Enemy of the People, New York Theater Workshop; Othello (Directed by Sam Gold, Starring Daniel Craig & David Oyelowo), Page 73; You Got Older (original cast, directed by Anne Kauffman, Drama Desk Nomination for Outstanding Play), The Mint; Garside's Career (Drama Desk Nomination for Outstanding Revival of a Play), and Fashions for Men, (Drama Desk Nomination for Outstanding Revival of a Play), Performance Space New York; The Slow Room (Directed by Annie Dorsen) , The Actors Company Theater; Beyond Therapy, The Flea; The Notebook of Trigorin, The Barrow Group; Couriers and Contrabands, The Guthrie Theater; Arms and the Man, The Alley Theater; A Few Good Men, The Denver Center; A Doll’s House, The Fischer B. Center for Performing Arts; Love in the Wars (world premier), Virginia Stage Company; The Great Gatsby, The Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey; Coriolanus and Villa La Pietra in Florence, Italy; As You Like It. He has worked as a guest director at The Stella Adler Studio of Acting, helming productions of Mine by Laura Marks; Closer by Patrick Marber; Rapture, Blister, Burn by Gina Gionfriddo; Reasons to be Pretty by Neil LaBute and Much Ado About Nothing which toured New York Metropolitan area public schools and prisons. Michael has served as a faculty member at SUNY Albany, New York Film Academy and the Chilean American Institute in Santiago, Chile. He is a co-founder of Wheelhouse Theater Company, whose productions of Happy Birthday Wanda June and Life Sucks received NY Times Critics Picks, Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Nominations. Michael's passion for the arts has also led him into the world of film production, serving as a consulting producer on the critically acclaimed documentary film Satisfied (Amblin Entertainment), which had it's world premier at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2024. He is a Usual Suspect at New York Theater Workshop and received his M.F.A in Acting from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.