Equity actor Herb Newsome returns this summer for his second season at the Lyric Repertory Company. In addition to performing in his own one-man show ‘Break It Down,’ the multi-talented director/playwright/set designer will also play Orsino in Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night.’
LOGAN – There’s an old saying in theater circles that “… you go to the movies to be entertained, but you go to the theater to have your life changed.”
Equity actor/playwright Herb Newsome firmly believes that.
Newsome is back in Logan this summer to perform his one-man show Brake It Down and also play Orsino in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
It’s Newsome’s second season with the Lyric Repertory Company, after delivering brilliant performances in August Wilson’s masterpiece Fences, in the farce Fox on the Fairway and another of his own one-man shows Freeman in Paris in 2022.
Newsome talked about the ups and downs of a career in theater during a “Page to Stage” gathering with young actors from Utah State University and mostly older Summer Citizens on June 7.
“You’ve really got to love what you’re doing,” he said, while acknowledging that actors in general and particularly young performers just starting out often find their fate in the hands of capricious directors.
“I don’t believe in the whole starving artist thing …” he said. “That’s why it’s good to have another career to fall back on when times are tough.”
Newsome has raised that idea into an art form, including a second, third and maybe a fourth career – all in theater circles.
He’s kind of the definition of the term “multi-talented.” In fact, according to Lyric artistic director Richie Call, Newsome has left his fellow performers at the Lyric Rep wondering if there’s anything in the theater field that he can’t do.
A native New Yorker now transplanted to Los Angeles, Newsome earned his reputation as a playwright and director when he began writing one-man plays that he could perform in.
Newsome has authored five solo shows, including Devil’s Heaven, Break It Down and Freeman in Paris.
He has also written a full-length play, Revenge of a King, a hip-hop musical based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which was recently produced by the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa.
“In this business, sometimes you have to make your own work,” he explained.
As a director, Newsome has guided productions for the New York International Fringe Festival, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, the National Black Theater, the Hollywood Fringe Festival, the Kuntu Repertory Company and the New Horizons Theater.
“We already knew that Herb acts, writes, dances and plays multiple musical instruments,” Call explained. “But this summer we’re learning of yet another skill set he possesses.”
Newsome’s additional theater niche is set design and construction.
His first experience with building was in wood shop in high school, Call said. Newsome was involved in scene shop work in college soon after. Then a friend called him in for help with sets at a summer stock theater company.
While directing a show in Pittsburgh, Herb needed a car built for the set and because resources were scarce, he went into the scene shop at night and built the car himself.
Months later, the artistic director at New Horizons Theatre in Pittsburgh called him back to build an entire set. Newsome now regularly flies out to design and build sets as well as direct productions for that theater company.
Here in Logan, Newsome is also busy designing and building the set for his one-man show at the Black Box Theatre on the campus of Utah State University.
Sub-titled as a “one-man hip hop journey through time,” Newsome will explore the history of the early days of a cultural phenomenon in Break It Down.
In that show, Newsome will play 10 characters using music, dance, video, graffiti and rhyming to help local audiences understand the roots of hip hop.
Break It Down will debut on June 30, with additional performances on July 1, 7, 13 and 22 at the Black Box Theatre in the Chase Fine Arts Center on the USU campus.