Theater News

Michele Shay to Star in A.C.T.’s Gem of the Ocean

Michele Shay in A.C.T.'s Seven Guitars
Michele Shay in A.C.T.’s Seven Guitars

Obie Award winner Michele Shay will play Aunt Ester in the American Conservatory Theatre’s production of Gem of the Ocean, February 10-March 12. The production will be directed by Tony Award-winning actor Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who played Caesar in Gem‘s Broadway production. He also helmed another production of Gem last year at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey.

The show’s cast will feature Steven Anthony Jones as Solly, Gregory Wallace as Caesar, Owiso Odera as Citizen Barlow, Chuck Patterson as Eli, Rosalyn Ruff as Black Mary, and Raynor Scheine as Rutherford, the same role he played in the Broadway production.
The creative team will include Michael Carnahan (set design), Karen Perry (costume design), Jane Cox (lighting design), Garth Hemphill (sound design), and Bill Sims, Jr. (original music).

Shay won the Obie for Matura’s Meetings and received both a Tony Award nomination and an Outer Critics Circle Award for her role as Louise in Wilson’s Seven Guitars, which she also performed at A.C.T. Her other Broadway credits include For Colored Girls… and Home.