Steph Paylor is a recent graduate from Westfield State University. She is extremely excited that Absurd Person Singular is her first professional show and is absolutely thrilled to work with such a talented group of people. Her previous stage management credits include An Oresteia, The Deputy, Hamlet, Julius Caesar and The Seagull. Steph would also like to thank her parents for all of the undying love and support they have given her. She truly does not know where she would be without them.
Erika Bailey is a professional dialect coach and the head of voice and speech or the MFA Acting program at University of Missouri—Kansas City. As a dialect coach she has worked at the McCarter Theatre, The Guthrie Theatre and regularly for the Kansas City Repertory Theatre where she has coached Cabaret, Syringa Tree, Christmas Carol and Bus Stop among other projects. She also coached the Tony-nominated production of Mary Stuart on Broadway. She received an MFA from Brandeis and an MA in Voice Studies from Central School of Speech and Drama.
Alan Ayckbourn This year marks Mr. Ayckbourn’s 52nd year as a theatre director and his 54th as a playwright. He has spent his life in theatre, rarely if ever tempted by television or film, which perhaps explains why he continues to be so prolific. To date he has written 77 plays and his work has been translated into over 35 languages, is performed on stage and television throughout the world and has won countless awards. Major successes include: Relatively Speaking, How the Other Half Loves, Absurd Person Singular, Bedroom Farce, A Chorus of Disapproval and The Norman Conquests. The National Theatre recently revived his 1980 play Season’s Greetings to great acclaim and the past year alone has seen West End productions of Absent Friends and A Chorus Of Disapproval. In 2009, he retired as artistic director of the Stephen Joseph, where almost all his plays have been and continue to be first staged. Holding the post for 37 years, he still feels that perhaps his greatest achievement was the establishment of this company’s first permanent home when the two auditoria complex fashioned from a former Odeon Cinema opened in 1996. In recent years, he has been inducted into American Theatre’s Hall of Fame, received the 2010 Critics’ Circle Award for Services to the Arts and become the first British playwright to receive both Olivier and Tony Special Lifetime Achievement Awards. He was knighted in 1997 for services to the theatre.
Bill Mootos* he/him (Rick Pepperberg and Howard Towers) is delighted to return in a wonderful new play to Central Square Theater, where he appeared in The Hound of the Baskervilles and Absurd Person Singular. Recent theater credits include Trouble in Mind and The Little Foxes with Lyric Stage Company; Clue with Greater Boston Stage Company; Bud, Not Buddy at Wheelock Family Theatre; Race at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre; Mothers and Sons with Shakespeare & Company; Shear Madness at Ivoryton Playhouse; and Baskerville with The Barnstormers Theatre Company. Other credits include productions with Boston Playwrights Theatre, SpeakEasy Stage Company, New Rep, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Gloucester Stage, Huntington Theatre Company, and many others. He has appeared in many feature films, most recently the Oscar-nominated The Holdovers (now on Peacock), Boston Strangler, Don’t Look Up, Castle Rock, Little Women, and Daddy’s Home 2. He is a proud AEA & SAG-AFTRA member, and the recipient of 2 IRNE Awards for best actor. Bill can next be seen in Dial M for Murder at Greater Boston Stage Company.
Liz Hayes is delighted to appear with The Nora. Credits include Into the Woods (Fiasco/McCarter Theater); Lungs and Collected Stories (New Repertory Theatre, IRNE Nomination); Crimes of the Heart (Gloucester Stage); Deported (a dream play) (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre); Love Song (Elliot Norton Nomination), Look Back in Anger and Marisol (Orfeo Group); Breaking the Code (Underground Railway Theater); Adding Machine (Elliot Norton Nomination, SpeakEasy Stage Company); Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Three Tall Women, Shakespeare in Hollywood, A Little Night Music and The Spitfire Grill (Lyric Stage Company of Boston) and Strangers on a Train (Stoneham Theatre). She is a graduate of Brown University, holds an MFA from The Shakespeare Theatre’s Academy for Classical Acting and teaches Voice & Speech at The Boston Conservatory.