Heinrich von Kleist burned brightly as a genius of the German Romantic era, rising to glory in the feverish artistic circles of Goethe and Schiller, but his suicide on the banks of the lake Wannsee outside of Berlin cut short this meteoric career. By agreement, Kleist shot his friend Henriette Vogel and then himself after taking afternoon coffee by the lake. Kleist’s life and death seemed to capture the simmering eroticism of death in German Romanticism: too bright, too sensitive, too pure for this world, he was fated to die. Kleist’s sensational suicide gained him immediate notoriety and he was soon elevated him into the pantheon of German literary gods. He remains one of the most widely produced German playwrights, and the fascination with his life has only increased as biographers uncovered unmistakable evidence of his bisexuality.
Marc (Marco Formosa) is an American scholar in Berlin, attempting to rewrite a failed dissertation on Kleist. Konrad (Nate Faust), from whom he is letting a room, offers Marc help in understanding his attraction to Kleist and opens up a disturbing confrontation with identity. Konrad’s girlfriend Mina (Ji-Hye Kwon) is pulled into the vortex of their discovery. The life of Kleist (David Marshall) finds its eerie parallels in Marc’s awakening.

David Marshall (Performer) David Marshall is a recent graduate of the New School for Drama MFA program. NSD credits include Parolles/Alls Well that Ends Well, Max/Bent, Big Tuna/Den of Thieves, Man/Aporia, Rummell/Pillars of Society. NYC credits include Ian/Shining City (59 E59th) and Jim/Red Cross (Michael Chekhov Theater Co.) David is from Cape Cod MA and he lives in Brooklyn.

Ji-Hye Kwon (Performer) Ji-Hye Kwon earned her BA in drama from Dong-guk University in Seoul, Korea, and her MFA from the New School for Drama. NSD credits include Komachi/Komachi, Mina/Waking Up With Strangers, Sadako/A Thousand Cranes, Lady/I have It, Mrs. Yamashita/Kokoro, Girl/Kabuki Seagull.

Marco Formosa (Performer) NYC Credits include, Mac Wellman's The Invention of Tragedy (Classic Stage Company), Animals That Live in the Mirror (Classic Stage Company), The Private Lives of the Master Race (59E59), Poppies (NYC Fringe), The Last One Left (Midtown International Theatre Festival). Marco recently received his MFA from the New School for Drama.

Mary Beth Smith (Director) is a graduate from The New School for Drama's MFA in Directing program and is currently a directing associate with Prospect Theater Company. A few of her past credits include Lovers: Winners by Brian Friel, Blank by Rachel White, and The Blue Room by David Hare. Before coming to New York Mary Beth specialized in both directing Shakespeare and magic. She's a native from Louisiana and is happy to be working on Waking Up With Strangers with this amazing cast!

Nate Faust (Performer) Nate Faust is a graduate of the MFA Acting program at The New School for Drama. His New School credits include: John Proctor, The Crucible; Johan Toennesen, The Pillars of Society; Man, The Blue Room (59E59); Konrad, Waking Up with Strangers; Max, Extinction. NYC credits include: Mark, Bar Story (American Theatre of Actors). Other credits include: Anton, Summer of My German Soldier (World Premier, Encore Theatre Company). Nate Faust can also be seen in the upcoming Sam French Festival as part of Gabe McKinley’s American Royal.

Paul David Young (Playwright) Playwright Paul David Young won the 2009 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and was runner-up for the Kendeda Fellowship of the Alliance Theatre, Atlanta. His play Times and Places was performed in Icelandic in Reykjavik and in English in the La Mama E.T.C. “Experiments” reading series. Primary Stages held a reading of his play No One But You in 2007. His play David & Ira will be produced in New York in 2009. His play Aporia was given a public reading at the Living Theatre in December 2008, won third in the New Works of Merit International Playwriting Competition, and was presented in a reading in April 2009 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, where it was a finalist for the Cauble Short Play Award. A collaborative performance/installation piece, Balcony Scene, was produced at the New York art gallery LMAK Projects in December 2008. He is a Millay Colony Resident Artist for September 2009. He graduated from Yale College, Columbia Law School, and The New School for Drama, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Germany. He studied with Christopher Shinn, Michael Weller, Frank Pugliese, and Edward Allan Baker, among others. His theater commentary includes “Advanced Forms of Emptiness: Handke and Jelinek in Berlin,” and “Performing the Novel: Elevator Repair Service Reads The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner,” both in PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art (MIT Press). He was co-curator of “Perverted by Theater,” an art exhibition about the intersection of visual art and theater at apexart, New York, October – December 2008.