Herb Newsome is an actor, writer, director, designer and all around artist born and raised in New York City and currently resides in Los Angeles.

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As an actor his selected theater credits include The First Deep Breath and Paradise Blue (Geffen Playhouse) A Raisin in the Sun (Fresno City Theater), A Fox on the Fairway, Fences, and Twelfth Night (Lyric Repertory Company) Macbeth and  Richard III (Colorado Shakespeare Festival) , Revenge of a King (National Arts Festival-South Africa) , Take Me Out (Foothills Theater) , 911: A Day in the  Life of a People  and  The Meeting (LAF Rep) , News To Me and Riding the Turnpike (Hartbeat Ensemble) Re:Definition (HHTF), No Place To Be Somebody (Penn Stage Center Stage) and six August Wilson plays- Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Kuntu Rep), Fences, The Piano Lesson,  and Radio Golf (Penn State Centerstage) King Hedley II (A Noise Within) and Jitney (Elmwood Playhouse). He has been a part of many theater festivals across the country including, the New York International Fringe Festival, The Philadelphia Fringe Festival, The National Black Theater Festival (Winston-Salem, N.C.), and around the world at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa. His Film credits include The Brother from Another Planet, Untamed, American Exit, Sweet Nothings, Pimpin' Ain't Easy and Abandoned. 

 

As a playwright he has penned three solo shows in which he was also the performer, In Devil’s Heaven, Break It Down and Freeman in Paris (which was honored with 2011 Humanities Script writing Award presented by the Institute of African American Research at UNC-Chapel Hill). His full length play Revenge of a King, a hip-hop musical based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, has been produced in 8 cities across the country as well as the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa. 

 

As a director his credits include Revenge of a King for the NY International Fringe Festival, the national tour of Roll of Thunder Hear, My Cry for the National Theater of Arts and Education, Forgivable Sins, a finalist at the Samuel French One Act Festival in NYC, Sing Black Hammer and Journey of the Spirits at the Kuntu Repertory Theater, and Topdog/Underdog, Detroit '67,  Front Porch Society and Too Heavy For Your Pocket at the New Horizon Theater, and The Colored Museum for the Oakwood School He also developed and directed a One Man Show entitled Problem Child, which he co-wrote, starring Matt McManus for the Hollywood Fringe Festival 2019.

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Herb is currently working on King Hedley II at A Noise Within understudying the role of Elmore and will be returning to the  Lyric Repertory Company this summer where he will appear in Driving Miss Daisey and Noel Coward's Hay Fever.  He is also currently designing the set for New Horizon Theater Production of The Nacerima Society by Pearl Cleage and Shelli Boone's one-woman show Wig at the Willie Agee Playhouse.