THE CAST

Gabrielle Aimée got her start in school plays and as a soloist in her high school’s gospel choir. She continued performing as a gospel choir soloist while studying French at NYU. Televised singing appearances include: Viña del Mar’s international music festival before a live audience of 25,000, the CBS revival of Star Search, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon as a backup vocalist for Robbie Dupree with The Roots. Gabrielle is also a background vocalist for Wheatus, with whom she will go on a UK tour this fall. She can regularly be seen performing her original music in such NYC venues as Rockwood Music Hall, The Bitter End, and The Living Room, and is currently completing her first studio album with Oscar-winning producer Leo Sidran. As an actress, Gabrielle has been featured on Ugly Betty, Royal Pains, in the HBO film You Don’t Know Jack, and in Bart Freundlich’s The Rebound, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Michael Rozett has been a writer/producer in entertainment media for eighteen years. Most recently he was a staff producer at the Chedd Angier Lewis Production Company in Boston. Previously he produced, directed and edited the satirical short film Slappy’s Sliding Scale, and was a producer and writer for the History Channel Series Tougher In Alaska. Michael produced, wrote and directed Rare Mileage, a documentary about private railroad cars shown in competition at the 2007 Woods Hole Film Festival. He was an associate producer of Today’s Military, a syndicated documentary profiling members of the US Armed Forces. He has worked on television and film projects for Moore Huntley Productions, Moody Street Pictures and Northern Light Productions.

Tracy Middendorf can currently be seen as Babette on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. On stage, she was most recently seen at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Old Times and Yale Repertory Theatre in Battle of Black and Dogs. Other stage credits include: After the Fall (Fountain Theatre—Ovation and Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Actress), Summer and Smoke (Fountain Theatre—Ovation and Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Actress), Ah! Wilderness (Lincoln Center). Film credits include: The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Mission Impossible III, Just Add Water. Her television credits include Six Feet Under, 24, Alias, House M.D., Lost, The Mentalist.

NYC Theater: Italian American Reconciliation (The Barrow Group), Burn This (ATA), For Want of Nothing (MRT), September 12th (Nuyorican Poets Cafe), Desperate Acts (ATA), The Summer Winds (Nuyorican Poets Cafe), Orange, Lemon, Egg, Canary (PS 122), Girls (Producers Club), Sideways Stories from Wayside School (Manhattan Children's Theatre), Harpo & Juliet (Nuyorican Poets Cafe), Outlet I & II (13th Street Repertory). Film: The Talk Man, The Boyz of Summer,  Scalp, Detox. Brian holds a BA in Theater from Fordham Lincoln Center and studies privately with Karl Bury. He is also an amateur Golden Gloves boxer.  

Born and raised in the Bronx, John is a US Navy Veteran and former Merchant Seaman who began working in the theater at The Irish Arts Center in NY. Having been fortunate enough to maintain a thirty-odd year career in theater, television and film, he is honored to be returning to the NY stage as part of this production of BREAK. John's family has many veterans of the NYC Fire and Police Departments past and present. His father worked in Engine Cos. 73, 61 and 305 among others and his grandfather was an FDNY "Probie" at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911. He joins everyone in this production in offering a sincere and humble thanks to the men and women in all uniforms who put their lives on the line in the service of others.

Liza J. Bennett recently appeared on Broadway in the Tony-nominated revival of The Merchant of Venice.  Television appearances include the CBS series The Good Wife.  Training: South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities and the Juilliard School Drama Division.

Broadway: Dividing the Estate (LCT). Off Broadway: The Orphans’ Home Cycle (Signature Theater), Dividing the Estate (Primary Stages). Regional: The Foreigner (John Engeman Theater, Long Island), The Roads to Home (2nd Story Theater), The Trip to Bountiful (Actors Theatre of SF), Angel Feathers (Lost Theater). TV: Beyond the Prairie (CBS miniseries), Promised Land, “Dawson’s Creek.” Film: Double Born, Infection, Cool Air, Bulletface, Future Weather and Young Adult.

Yu-Han Huang, originally from Taiwan, holds an MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Department of Design for Stage and Film, where her credits include the sets for Orpheus Descending, Romantic Roulette, and Where The Sidewalk Ends. She received her BA in theater and drama from National Taiwan University, where she designed Rhinoceros. Her other credits include Moon Lovers (Tainaner ensemble), Life of Love (Tainaner ensemble), Copenhagen (M.O.V.E Theater), The Cave of The Craving Moth (Formosa Zephyr Opera Troupe).

Carolyn Hoffmann-Schneider hold a MFA in Costume design from NYU Tisch School for the Arts Department of Design for Stage and Film, as well as a BFA in fashion design from the Massachusetts College of Art. Her recent credits include: Baltimore in Black and White (Band Wagon Productions), The Saint of Bleaker Street (Dicapo Opera), Bastien und Bastienne (Opera Del West), Goodbye New York, Goodbye Heart (The Production Company), Tis Pity She’s a Whore (NYU), and A Map of the World (NYU).

Carolyn has designed for Theatre, Dance, Opera, and Film.

A smattering of Kathi's work includes the recent Los Angeles productions of From Hoboken to Hollywood at The Edgemar, The Ballad of Emmett Till (currently nominated for an NAACP Award) at The Fountain, plus YELLOW and Love Sucks at The Coast Playhouse. Some other projects include: A Man's a Man, Sliding Into Hades, Mary Barnes, Night Sky, Idioglossia (Odyssey), Photograph 51, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Night of the Iguana, Summer and Smoke, Yellowman, I Am A Man, Darker Face of the Earth, Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, Master Class, Central Avenue (Fountain Theatre), Southern Baptist Sissies, Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Housewife, Sordid Lives (Zephyr and on tour), Uncle Vanya, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Into the Woods, to name a few. She has received several career achievement awards, Theatre LA Ovation Awards, and NAACP awards plus others. She can be reached at delightfool@gmail.com for more credits, info and awards.