 | Brandon J. Dirden made his professional acting debut at the age of 12 in a production of August Wilson’s play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone at the Alley Theatre in Houston. Later in his life, he continued his exploration of August Wilson’s work and was honored with an Obie, AUDELCO, and Theatre World Award for his performance in The Piano Lesson at Signature Theatre in New York. In 2015, Brandon made his directorial debut, again with a work of August Wilson, with a production of Seven Guitars at Two River Theater in New Jersey. He followed this portraying ‘Levee’ in Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, also at the Two River Theater. He recently returned to Two River to star as Walter Lee Younger in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. On Broadway, his credits include All the Way, in which he starred as Martin Luther King Jr. opposite Bryan Cranston’s Lyndon Johnson, Enron, Clybourne Park and Prelude to a Kiss. Off-Broadway credits include The First Breeze of Summer and Day of Absence (Signature Theatre); Detroit ’67 (Public Theater & Classical Theatre of Harlem); Peter and the Starcatcher (New York Theatre Workshop). Television credits include The Good Wife, The Big C, Public Morals, and BrainDead. You can also see him in Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down on Netflix and as Dennis Aderholt in the FX series, The Americans. Training: BA, Morehouse College and MFA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Brandon now makes his home in New Jersey. |