Jason Butler Harner
Theatre Master Classes Sept 10 – 14, 2007
Jason Butler Harner graduated from Theatre VCU with a BFA in Acting in 1992. His first play was What I Did Last Summer, directed by Gary Hopper in then named Shafer Street Theatre. He is currently starring on Broadway in Tom Stoppard’s landmark trilogy The Coast of Utopia alongside 40 actors including Billy Crudup, Ethan Hawke, Martha Plimpton, Brian F. O’Byrne , Amy Irving and Richard Easton. A frequent presence in Off-Broadway theatres, he garnered an OBIE Award for his radical reinterpretation of Tesman in New York Theatre Workshop’s acclaimed Hedda Gabler and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for his performance in The Paris Letter at the Roundabout Theatre. Other Off-Broadway credits include Orange Flower Water (EDGE Theatre), Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme (Lincoln Center), Juno and the Paycock (Roundabout Theatre), Crimes of The Heart (Second Stage), The Ruby Sunrise ( The Public), An Experiment with an Air Pump (Manhattan Theatre Club), Five Flights (Rattlestick), Henry VIII (New York Shakespeare Festival), Loved Less (VIA Theatre), Macbeth (The Public, with Alec Baldwin and Angela Bassett), and Tony Kushner’s revival of Hydriotaphia, or the Death of Dr. Browne.
After graduating from VCU, he was an apprentice at Actors Theatre of Louisville, and subsequently moved to New York City where he earned an MFA in Acting from New York University. Most recently he has appeared in the award-winning Coast of Utopia at the Lincoln Center Theater. He has been fortunate to act in theatres across the country with a broad spectrum of directors and plays, most notably in The Glass Menagerie at The Kennedy Center, opposite Sally Field; at the Mark Taper Forum in The Cherry Orchard, opposite Annette Bening and Alfred Molina; in the American premiere of The Invention of Love at the American Conservatory Theatre opposite James Cromwell; and at the Dallas Theatre Center in the title role of Hamlet. He has also been seen on the stages of Seattle Repertory, Yale Repertory, Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Commonwealth Shakespeare Festival, and the Adirondack Theatre Festival.
Recent television credits include appearances in each of the Law and Orders, with Kyra Sedgewick on The Closer, and as ‘Dandruff Donnie’ on Hope and Faith.’ Film appearances include the indies Garmento, Nylon, Trifling with Fate, Robert DeNiro’s directorial debut The Good Shepherd , and the forth coming action adventure release of NEXT starring Nicholas Cage and Julianne Moore.
His training and exposure to a number of methods has enabled him to not only work in all the mediums, but also on a variety of material ranging from classical to new American plays, as well as an extensive palette of performance styles.
