Blog Posts - BECCA BALLENGER

Workshop of DOWN SOUTH by Edward Precht

12/14/2018

I had the enormous pleasure to spend a week digging into Edward Precht's moving new play, Down South, culminating in a reading at the Drama Bookshop.

Shady Mae Beauford is a single mother raising her adult son with Down Syndrome in coastal Carolina. As America's Bicentennial approaches, a young couple with a radically-different parenting style moves in next door, and this tenuous mother-son bond begins to unravel as Shady Mae is forced to confront how much independence to give her only child. Meanwhile, a nest of loggerhead turtles hatch on the beach and Hub wonders: will they find their way?

Featuring: Wendy Rich Stetson as Shady Mae and Eddie Barbanell as Hub, with Becca Ballenger, David Jackson and Joshua Turchin.

Workshop Assistant: Marina Montesanti.
Design Collaborators: Emmie Finkel and Megan Lang.

PAPERMAKER at Shadowland Stages

10/21/2018

Another openin', another show in Ellenville!

We took a time machine back to Maine in the 1980s in novelist Monica Woods' first play Papermaker. It was a joy to play with this stunning cast, helmed by Stephanie Zimbalist ("Remington Steele"), featuring Steve Brady, Molly Parker Myers, John Pietrowski, and Ed Rosini, under the direction of Brendan Burke.

As Emily, Becca Ballenger lets her character unfold in a series of crises that leads her to important decisions in the direction of her own life.
- Times Herald Record

Emily (Becca Ballenger) is torn between her entitled background and the lives of the "flesh and blood" workers. Ballenger is defiantly determined as her character yearns for the closeness of the families in the mill town. - Aisle Seat

Below, the cast with Monica Wood (far right) and director Brendan Burke (far left).

THE MYSTERY OF LOVE AND SEX at Shadowland Stages

9/26/2018

I'm thrilled to bring the complicated, brave, and honest Charlotte to life this September in THE MYSTERY OF LOVE AND SEX by Bathsheba Doran at Shadowland Stages.

The remarkable cast includes Jovan Davis, Kathy McCafferty, and Sean Marrinan, directed by the wonderful Melisa Annis.

Director Melisa Annis has cast the show beautifully, navigating able actors through waves of humor and pathos… We see Charlotte and Jonny physically mature; a tribute to two fine actors. Ballenger brinks perkiness, passion, and fierce fervor to her role… [Kathy] McCafferty and Ballenger as mother and daughter are spot-on and share some stunning scene work.
- Aisle Seat by Lori Schneider

Steel Magnolias at Geva Theatre Center

4/12/2018

"It's a little poofier than I would normally do, but I'm nervous."

I'm thrilled to head to Geva Theatre this spring to play Annelle Dupuy-Desoto (for a second time!) with an all-star cast of women.

Join us May 8 - June 3 in Rochester!

Find more info and tickets here.

"[Ballenger] blossoms from a “lost pup”... into a woman who is often a source of humor."
- Beyond the Nest

"Ballenger as Annelle... grabs hearts with her sincerity and religious fervor."
- Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

WE WILL NOT BE SILENT at New Jersey Rep

1/17/2018

I was honored to play Sophie Scholl in NJ Rep's reading of David Meyers' WE WILL NOT BE SILENT
on Monday, Jan. 15.

I was thrilled to perform alongside powerhouse Ezra Barnes as Kurt Grunwald under the direction of Zoya Katchodourian. The reading was an enormous success-- in fact, it was so oversold that audience members were sitting in the aisles and even seated behind us onstage.

We Will Not Be Silent‎ tells the true story of The White Rose and Sophie Scholl, a German college student who led the only act of public resistance to the Nazis during the Second World War. The play is not about the Holocaust, but examines the role that ordinary Germans played in the rise of Hitler. At a time when fascism is resurgent in Europe and across the world, We Will Not Be Silent‎ examines the moral strength and clarity that led a group of German students to risk their lives for a righteous, but hopeless, cause.

PUSSY SLUDGE wins the American Playwriting Foundation's Relentless Award!

12/28/2017

I'm utterly thrilled to share that Pussy Sludge, the play I helped develop with Less Than Rent and playwright Gracie Gardner and performed at HERE in February 2017, has won the 2018 Relentless Award presented by the American Playwriting Foundation.

Previous winners include Is God Is by Aleshea Harris (Soho Rep 2018) and The Wolves by Sarah Delappe (LCT 2017)

For the prize, established in honor of the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman after his death in 2014, Ms. Gardner will receive $45,000, and her play will be produced in a reading series across the United States and in Britain. “You read so many plays that are versions of things you’ve read before. This play is unique and fearless. And the undeniability of that struck all the judges,” Mr. Katz said. The prize seeks to promote new American plays, and Pussy Sludge was chosen from over 1,000 submissions and judged blindly by a group of playwrights and theater professionals. According to the foundation’s announcement, the piece is “a tender exploration of questioning authority, suspending shame through intimacy, and very bad advice.”
- New York Times

Appearing on VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED on Discovery ID

11/8/2017

Village of the Damned
a miniseries on
Investigation Discovery

In this special five-part miniseries, I appear as Amber Starr, a Dryden High School cheerleader who finds herself caught in a toxic and abusive relationship that goes from bad to much worse.

Amber's story will appear on two episodes of the series:
"Dryden's Dark Soul" on Tuesday, December 12 at 10/9c
"The Final Fall, Part 1" on Tuesday, December 19 at 10/9c

Twenty years ago, as gossip swirled that a so-called "curse" loomed over Dryden, residents focused on healing through heartbreak while law enforcement worked tirelessly to pursue justice. In a town of 15,000 people where everybody knows each other, residents were left in fear and wondering "who could be next?"

Learn more about the story and the episodes here.

Reading of I'M REVOLTING at the New Ohio

11/5/2017

Reading the lead role of Reggie in Gracie Gardner's newest play,

I'm Revolting
New Ohio Theatre
November 7, 2017
7pm

Directed by Moritz Von Stuelpnagel

Featuring
Brad Bellamy, Patrick K Dooley, Caroline Kaplan, Claire Karpen, Stephanie Jean Lane, Hannah Mitchell, Michaela Morton, David Townsend, Tiffany Villarin, and more.

Produced by Hannah Greene
and Less Than Rent Theatre

On a floor of the Sloan Kettering Outpatient Pavilion, a group of people are waiting to be called into a room one by one. Some of them have skin cancer, some of them are there to give support, but none of them want to be called into the room.

A play about doctors, and medicine, and the space in between the two.

The Climbers at Metropolitan Playhouse

8/9/2017

Portrait by Anna Paola Pizzocaro

The Climbers
by Clyde Fitch

September 8 - October 8, 2017
Metropolitan Playhouse
220 E. 4th St. NYC

After a thoroughly enjoyable run as Belgian orphan Marthe in Metropolitan's 2014 production of The Hero, I'm beyond happy to return to Metropolitan to play a decidedly un-orphaned and altogether insufferable young lady of society, Clara Hunter, in The Climbers. It's a hilarious 1901 play chock-full of tragedy, social-climbing, and flirting with married men. I can't wait.

* * *
Very funny... The excellent company of actors... work effectively as an ensemble and mine the characters for their inherent silliness and pathos without resorting to caricature.
-- Talkin' Broadway

THE SNOWMAKER Reading at NJ Rep

7/26/2017

It's always a joy to return to NJ Rep, especially when I get to play a precocious teenager with attitude.

THE SNOWMAKER
by Aleks Merilo

In the dead of winter, a teenage girl’s estranged father unexpectedly takes her to a cabin in the isolated woods of Montana. She doesn’t know where he has been for the last 10 years. And she doesn’t know who he is searching for at night, when he stares out the window, with a sawed-off shotgun by his side.

New Jersey Rep Monday Night Salon Reading
Monday, July 17 @ 7pm
with Edward O'Blenis, Becca Ballenger, Michael Pollard, and Jared Delaney

NY Times on A Midsummer Night's Dream:

"Warm-blooded, frolicsome and splendidly cast, this production at the 47th Street Theater leads with its heart. Nimbly played, the lively young lovers seem as if they could live down the Street...They swoon, and we feel their rapture. They torment one another, and we pity their pain. When something is funny, which is often, the audience bubbles with belly laughter. The quality of mirth here is not strained, not even close, and thank goodness for that."

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