Lance Roger Axt

Lance Roger Axt is an actor, playwright, and producer. Lance portrayed Friar Laurence in the Hangar Theatre and Lincoln Center Institute’s state-wide tour of Romeo and Juliet, and appeared in numerous readings at the HRC Showcase Theatre, The Dramatists Guild, and the Ensemble Studio Theatre, where he was a member of the SPF Developmental Lab (1999-2000) and a three-time attendee at the EST’s Summer Conference in Lexington.
Lance is a graduate of the first MFA class from the Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island, where he appeared in fifteen productions including Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Burn This, Vinegar Tom, and Mad Boy Chronicle. He also performed with the Trinity Repertory Company in Peer Gynt (world premiere adaptation by David Henry Hwang) and A Christmas Carol, and with the Maine State Shakespeare Theatre at Monmouth in Merry Wives of Windsor, Sherlock Holmes and the Sign of Four, and Richard the Third.
Lance received his BA from San Francisco State University, where he appeared in Paris Underground, Hunting for Moby Dick, The Inspector General and Shogun Macbeth, and studied at the American Conservatory Theatre Summer Training Congress in 1990 and at the British American Drama Academy Midsummer at Oxford Program in 1992. Lance was a company member of the short-lived Theatre Forté in its inaugural season; he also co-produced, co-adapted, and co-starred in the workshop production of Based Loosely on The Stranger (from Camus), and produced and performed in the Bay Area premiere of Tony Kushner’s children’s play Yes Yes, No No, which toured to children’s hospitals in 1993.
Since 1988, Lance has worked with R.G. Davis (founder, San Francisco Mime Troupe), Jessica Litwak, William Peters, Yukihiro Goto, Simon Williams (TV’s Upstairs, Downstairs), Earle Gister (Yale School of Drama), George Hall, Jeannie Barroga, Oskar Eustis (Artistic Director, Trinity Repertory Company and the New York Shakespeare Festival), Brian Kulick, Kevin Moriarty (Artistic Director, Hangar Theatre), and playwrights David Henry Hwang, Kira Obolensky, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel. He has also been privileged to take master classes from Annette Bening, Dame Diana Rigg, John Rubenstein, Prunella Scales, Juliet Stevenson, Fiona Shaw, the late Nigel Hawthorne, Sir Derek Jacobi, and Barry Edelstein.
The 2000 writer-in-residence at the O’Connor Theatre Project in Mississippi, his first play Chasing Dragons debuted there following workshops and readings at the Trinity Rep Conservatory and New York Performance Works. He is also the author of the short works A Secret Language, or Without Fear of Falling; Fixing the Clock; Danny Boy and Maria; and Based Loosely on The Stranger.
In 2002, Axt created an international audio theatre production company called Play it by Ear Productions, and serves as Producing Director. In 2003, he produced three world-premiere radio one-acts for the Play it by Ear anthology series “We Have Ignition:” The Field by Elizabeth Benjamin (winner of the 2004 Ogle Award for outstanding Fantasy, Horror, or Mystery audio theatre piece), The Love Song Of... by Lynn Rosen, and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Chaz by Robert Grady. The second “We Have Ignition” series will feature the world premieres of Stephen Tesher’s Turn to Stone and Axt's original piece This Message Will Self-Destruct.
The works from the first series have aired on in New York City, KPFA FM in Berkeley, CA, KFAI FM in St. Paul, KUNM FM serving all of New Mexico, and the entire 2003 season was chosen to be part of the 2003 season of the syndicated series “The Radio Works.” In 2005, he produced a live re-creation of Norman Corwin’s legendary audio essay We Hold These Truths at the Canterbury Woods Auditorium in Pacific Grove, followed by a monthly series of old-time radio re-creations in Pacific Grove under the banner of “Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear” the following year. A second performance series premiered in 2008 called "A Signal to Noise," where contemporary plays are given an audio theatre treatment before a live audience, starting with The Odyssey Theatre's production of The Chicago Conspiracy Trial.
Play it by Ear Productions has been a proud member of the National Audio Theatre Festival, an organization dedicated to promoting contemporary radio theatre, since 2002; Lance has been a regular attendee at the NATF’s Audio Theatre Workshop in Missouri, where he performed in the audio drama Homefront directed by Marjorie Van Halteren, co-starring Broadway talent Reathel Bean (Doonesbury, Our Town with Paul Newman) in 2005, in Michael Wilson's Thar’s a Yankee! in 2006 (also serving as assistant director), and in Histories and Sonic Force.
He has taught Shakespeare to high school students and creative writing to at-risk teens at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, and Riker’s Island Prison Academy. In the summer of 2004, he taught Shakespeare at the Children’s Experimental Theatre in Carmel, and produced and directed original audio plays written and performed by the students of the CET in the spring seasons of 2005 and 2006 before setting up the Tune in Tomorrow workshop with Pacific Repertory Company’s School of Dramatic Arts from 2006 to 2008.
Lance is, at any given time, working on several creative projects simultaneously. He is also an avid collector of comic book artwork, and classic (and occasionally current) rock concert posters (especially Fillmore, Avalon, and Grande Ballroom shows).

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