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:
The Queen of Fenway Court: Isabella Stewart Gardner
“As instructive as it is entertaining, ‘The Queen of Fenway Court’ introduces Isabella as she struggles with her life as an ebullient, headstrong and feisty young wife stuck in an uptight, staid, class-obsessed Boston. She quickly abandons any thought of reining in her temperament to ‘blend in’ and soon she…
Glass Menagerie
“Leigh Strimbeck’s flawless portrayal of Amanda makes her a dynamo of delusion, keeping the present at bay with coquettishness unsuited to her age and shrill demands when reality can’t be ignored.“ (more here) — Steve Barnes, Times Union “Leigh Strimbeck shone as the show’s matriarch, Amanda Wingfield, skillfully inviting the…
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…
