WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Cast Spotlight: Maria Manzano Johnson & Tom Russo

MARIA MANZANO JOHNSON (MARTHA) has worked professionally as an actress, storyteller, director and teaching-artist. She is thrilled to be a part of a Bigger Dreams Production once again after having way too much fun in A Comedy of Tenors, Lend Me a Tenor, The Vagina Monologues, Love Loss and What I Wore, It Can’t Happen Here and Bad Seed. She has also worked locally with Catskill Community Players where she appeared in The Savannah Sipping Society, Rumors, Exhibit This and Office Hours. She performed in numerous productions at the Cider Mill Playhouse and toured with Creative Theatre of Princeton and the Appleseed Players, a company she co-founded. Maria has also acted at the Home for Contemporary Theater and Art in NYC and with Scranton Public Theater. She has worked in film and performed in commercials for television and radio. Maria lives in Oneonta with her incredibly supportive husband, Eric and their crazy dog Paolo.

TOM RUSSO (GEORGE) Tom’s interest in theatre goes back to the 1970’s when he was cast in productions of Arsenic and Old Lace, Inherit the Wind and Carl Reiner’s Enter Laughing. Acting took a back seat to another type of drama, a forty-year career as a trial attorney. After retiring from the courtroom to Cooperstown, Tom has enjoyed working in two of the annual productions of A Christmas Carol at the Farmer’s Museum. He has also performed in Fenimore Art Museum’s Next! staged readings of Three Days in Summer by John Paul Porter, KP by Linda Crawford and Peter Reich, Fall by Joseph Scott, Locker Room Talk by Karen Butler and Fall Forever by Eva Schegulla. He appeared as Lord Capulet in the Glimmer Globe Theatre production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Gonzalo in The Tempest and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night. Tom appeared as Sam in a reading of Tobin Wheeler’s Tangled Web for Writer’s Salon and Catskill Community Players at CANO. He also appeared as Charlie Aiken in Bigger Dreams Productions’ August: Osage County and as Buzz Windrip in Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here. Tom is delighted to be working with this superb group of actors.