Participating Actors

Keith Hamilton Cobb | Director

Keith Hamilton Cobb is an actor drawn mostly to the stage in his working life, who is also recognized for several unique character portrayals he has created for television.  He is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in acting. His award-winning play, American Moor (published by Methuen Drama), which explores the perspective of the African-American male through the metaphor of Shakespeare’s Othello, ran off-Broadway at Cherry Lane Theatre in the fall of 2019.  It is the winner of an Elliot Norton Award, an AUDELCO Award and two IRNE Awards and is part of the permanent collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Jessica Burr | Associate Director

Jessica Burr has been honored with the 2019 Kennedy Center ACTF Commendation for Distinguished Leadership, first prize at the 2016 Secondo Festival (Switzerland), the 2011 League of Professional Theatre Women’s Lucille Lortel Award and NY Innovative Theatre Awards, including outstanding production and choreography/movement, and the Caffe Cino Fellowship Award among eight total nominations. She was a featured panelist in the 2016 Brave Summit, a forum of women leaders, experts and scholars to drive cultural change. The founding artistic director of Blessed Unrest with whom she has directed and choreographed more than 20 productions (14 world premieres), she directs, choreographs and teaches at theatres and universities around the world.

Heather Benton | Amelia

Heather Benton is an actor/director/deviser who has performed internationally, nationally and in regional and downtown New York City theatre for the past two decades. Her work includes: national tours with Montana Repertory Theatre, including A Trip to Bountiful and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; regional theatre at American Repertory Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, Sierra Repertory Theatre, North Carolina Shakespeare Festival, Luna Stage, Village Theatre, Children’s Theatre Company, among others; NYC theatre at The New Ohio, The Tank, P.S. 122, The Clemente Soto Velez, The Connelly Theatre, Teatro La Tea, The Nuyorican and Collective: Unconscious. In 2019, she co-created *Necessary Digression, a performance collective, and played Elsa in the inaugural production of At Black Lake at The Tank. Heather is a frequent collaborator with Blessed Unrest, where she is currently developing a solo piece (Chasing Exposure, working title), having played Myra in Battle Of Angels last year at the New Ohio/Tennessee Williams Festival in Provincetown, MA. She is currently an associate professor/program coordinator of the BFA acting program at Montclair State University, where she teaches acting and movement and directs.

Stephanie Hodge | Desdemona

Stephanie Hodge is an actor and adventurer hailing from Pennsylvania. She has been working in regional theatre for more than seven years, including time at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival and Philadelphia Theatre Company. After an itinerant stint traveling the country by car, working on a horse ranch in California and filming projects in Georgia and Louisiana (including a short film for the Metropolitan Opera), she landed in New York City to delve into the creative justice work of the Untitled Othello Project.

Sarah Goeke | Bianca

Sarah Goeke, originally from Missouri, is an actor/writer living in New York City. Recent roles include: understudy for 53% Of at Second Stage Theatre and A Little Night Music at Barrington Stage; Lena Decker in Inherent Resolve at the Genesis Festival; Jessie in Cry It Out at City Theatre; and Cynthia in the first national tour of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. She's also appeared on Last Week Tonight and City on Fire.

Welland H. Scripps | Roderigo Strumenti

Welland H. Scripps is a NYC actor, producer, writer and father. Welland was a member of the Irondale Ensemble for eight years before co-founding the Letter of Marque Theater Co. in 2012. Since then he has been supporting ensemble theater in the tri-state area, branched out into film production and survived a pandemic. “I am very excited, and honored to be a part of the Untitled Othello Project. It is a joy to be working on such a problematic text with artists I respect and admire.”

Robert Manning | Othello

Robert Manning is a graduate of the University of Washington’s Professional Acting Training Program, MFA.  Upcoming work includes directing Last Dance, Jade and O.T. and producing/directing the web series Mars and Venus. Recent television work includes: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Secrets of Sulphur Springs, The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Brides (pilot), The Enemy Within, Madame Secretary, Blue Bloods, Braindead and Person of Interest. His films include Frogtown and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. Theatre work includes the Broadway/Off-Broadway productions of Magic/Bird and The Thing With Feathers and regional productions of Othello, The Christians and Two Trains Running. He received a 2008 NAACP Theatre Award nomination for Defiance at Pasadena Playhouse and a 2010 NAACP Theatre Award nomination for Battle Hymn at Ford Theatre and won a 2012 NAACP Theatre Award for Blues for an Alabama Sky at Pasadena Playhouse. He also teaches philosophy. Robert would like to thank his family for their everlasting support.  For more information and full credits, visit robertmanningjr.com or IMDB.com.

Terrell Donnell Sledge | Montano

Terrell Donnell Sledge believes in the pursuit of responsible art and expression, which facilitates the reimagining of values and perspectives. His work acknowledges the relationship between our social realities and the stories we create in order to harness and reinforce the positive impact of empathy, understanding and social integrity. Terrell counts himself fortunate to draw on his experience in expressive arts, non-profit community development, leadership coaching, writing and education, as he continues to uncover new truths in an old tale with The Untitled Othello Project at Sacred Heart. Story is the answer.

Aaron Michael Zook | Brabantio, Lodovico

Aaron Michael Zook joined Blessed Unrest’s training ensemble in 2014 and has since participated in the development of several new works including BODY, The Snow Queen and Refuge, as well as the 2021 adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Battle of Angels (assistant director/dialect coach). During his graduate studies at The Ohio State University, he trained with the Royal Shakespeare’s Stand Up for Shakespeare educational program and subsequently has shared its methods of dramatic inquiry in primary schools, college classrooms and professional coaching sessions. During the pandemic, Aaron participated in a weekly online reading series with The Upstart Crows, performing in every play in the Shakespeare canon. Highlights included Leontes, Richard II and Timon. A frequent collaborator, he is also the author of plays (We Are Burning) and musicals for children (Aesop’s Foibles). 

T. Ryder Smith | Iago

T. Ryder Smith has appeared on Broadway in Oslo, War Horse and Equus, and Off-Broadway in the premiere productions of Dead Man’s Cell Phone and Passion Play by Sarah Ruhl; The Gods Are Pounding My Head by Richard Foreman; Social Security by Christina Masciotti; Our Lady of Kibeho by Katori Hall; She Stoops to Comedy by David Greenspan; Apparition by Anne Washburn; Thom Pain by Will Eno; and Underneath the Lintel and The Wooden Breeks by Glen Berger. Regional theatre work includes the world premieres of Big Love by Chuck Mee (Actors Theatre of Louisville), Scenes from Court Life by Sarah Ruhl (Yale Rep), Creditors by Doug Wright (La Jolla Playhouse), Salome by Yael Farber (Shakespeare Theatre DC), Ass by Ellen Simon (Pioneer Theatre) and Lincolnesque by John Strand (Old Globe), as well as the post-Hurricane Katrina Waiting for Godot in New Orleans (Classical Theatre of Harlem/Creative Time), three seasons of rotating repertory at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival and Hal Scott’s production of Othello at Great Lakes Theatre Festival. Film and TV work includes Bull, Hunters, The Blacklist, Elementary, Damages, Nurse Jackie, the mini-series The Abolitionists, The Report, Brainscan and experimental films by Marie Losier, Daniel Fish, Lawrence Krauser and Rachel Rose. Audio work includes the animated series The Venture Brothers, the Bioshock videogames, Theatre of War, Pacifica Radio’s annual readings of James Joyce’s Ulysses and dozens of audiobooks. Honors include: Drama Desk Award for the three-actor, 30-character Lebensraum; Obie Award for outstanding ensemble for Oslo; Drama Desk nomination for outstanding solo performance in Underneath the Lintel; and an Audie Award for narration of Fire in Paradise. Upcoming feature films are Ikonophile Z by Richard Ledes, and Lost Nation by Jay Craven.