Leigh Strimbeck
(photo: Jeffrey Hornstein)
I’ve devoted my life to performance: acting, directing, teaching and writing. I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve always worked, which was my first goal. Along the way I reached many of other the goals I set for myself.
It’s still the most interesting thing to me, the need of human beings to share stories and all of the mediums and styles in which we do that.
And I have never stopped asking myself questions.
Why are some actors so compelling? What are they doing that I can learn to do? What is it about the vulnerability of an actor that can be so fantastic, and so unsettling? How can I communicate the craft to young actors so that they see the beauty, the risk, the dignity of the role of the fool in our society? When will I get my next gig?
When the lights go down in the theater my heart lifts up. Another story is on the way, and I can’t wait to see it, hear it, tell it, and give it away.
Excerpts from Recent Reviews:
Lion in Winter
“Then there’s Leigh Strimbeck as the queen. Her Eleanor is a middle-age seductress who shows us how she got Henry in the first place and also how she lost him. Eleanor is the key to all that matters to these other characters and Strimbeck blatantly uses subtlety to expose her…
Much Ado About Nothing
“The…action built to an emotional peak lead by Leigh Strimbeck as Leonata. She was a silent force early on, until she cracked the show wide open…Strimbeck’s performance defined the show for me.” — Aileen Burke, Nippertown review of Much Ado About Nothing July 20, 2022
LEWISTON
“One of the most emotionally affecting scenes of the recent theatrical season can be found on the stage of the Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill, New York. In ‘Lewiston’, actors Leigh Strimbeck and Daniel Hall Kuhn bring such heartbreaking depth to Samuel D. Hunter’s complex characters that one can only…
Blithe Spirit Indeed: The Voice Theater Brings “Back” to Life a Delightful Script in Woodstock
Ms. Strimbeck gives us a robust and eccentric Arcati; equal parts legitimate shaman and fellow seeker of truth. She invests the character with the confidence of someone who knows what she believes because she’s seen it with her own eyes, and still glories in what she has yet to encounter. In a relatively “light” play, a very talented actor gives us a very three-dimensional character.
Voice Theatre conjures up a frothy, frisky Blithe Spirit at Byrdcliffe
Leigh Strimbeck owns the stage at the Byrdcliffe in the role of the hippie spiritualist, playing her as cannier and less absurd than the rest of the characters are inclined to believe (or to behave themselves). There’s a little more going on here than your garden-variety shyster occultist fleecing the gullible masses with her airy-fairy mumbo-jumbo. Coward gave Madame Arcati’s flaky dialogue internal logic, and Strimbeck makes us root for her to prevail. That she travels everywhere sustainably by bicycle, day and night in all weathers, adds a surprising timeliness to this character….And Strimbeck grabs our delighted attention every time Madame Arcati swoops in.
