HAS:
Acted in all kinds of plays, from George Bernard Shaw to Annie Baker, for all kinds of theater companies.
CAN:
Nail the accent.
WILL:
Serve as associate artistic director of New City Theater’s forthcoming season.
Most of an actor’s life consists of not getting work. As a consequence, not every actor—not even every exceptionally talented actor—has the good fortune to be able to say no when opportunities do come along. Emily Chisholm is exceptionally talented, as anyone who has seen her perform can attest. Superlatives attach to her like iron to a magnet.
In 2004, critic Bret Fetzer pointed out that her performance in Psycho Beach Party turned what would have been a merely funny show into a “fantastic” one. Playing a surfer girl with multiple personalities, “she practically explodes out of her own impish body as she bounces, scampers, and writhes all over Northwest Actors Studio,” Fetzer wrote. In 2015, critic Brendan Kiley wrote in a review of the Pulitzer Prize–winning play The Flick that Chisholm “owns the stage… flirting through her scowl and sneaking morsels of compassion through the bars of her sarcasm.”
Her performances have drawn many more accolades besides. Another Stranger critic still talks about her performance in the 2012 production of Keri Healy’s play Torso. We’ve been talking about nominating Chisholm for a Genius Award for years.
