Fences

BIKO EISEN-MARTIN* (Lyons) Off-Broadway: Lift (59E59) Regional Theatre: All The Way (Cleveland Playhouse); Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Folger); Stick Fly, Under The Skin (Arden Theatre Company); The Ashes Under Gait City (Contemporary American Theatre Festival); The Whipping Man (Syracuse Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Gulfshore Playhouse); Lift (Crossroads Theatre Co); Topdog/Underdog (Marin Theatre Company); Brother Size, Love’s Labours Lost, Three Sisters (Chautauqua Theatre Company); Ruined, The Liar, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Christmas Carol, The Taming of the Shrew (Denver Center Theatre Company); King Lear, Our Town, The Taming of the Shrew (Colorado Shakespeare Festival); Radio Golf (TheatreWorks); Fuku Americanus (Intersection for the Arts); Rage Is Back (Berkeley Rep. (ws)); Urban Retreat (Philadelphia Theatre Company (ws)); Invasive Species (Peoples Light (ws)). Film: Poetic License. Education: Brown University, National Theatre Conservatory.

JIMMIE “J.J.” JETER* (Cory) Winston-Salem, N.C. native, Jeter is a 2016 graduate of The Juilliard School in New York. His recent theatrical credits include: Broadway: My Letter to Broadway (Ensemble). Regional: Romeo and Juliet (Benvolio) at Shakespeare Theatre Company (Washington D.C.) He will be featured in the short film Hold On at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

JEFFERSON A. RUSSELL* (Gabriel) is pleased to be making his PTC debut with Fences after having recently appeared as Shealy in Jitney at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. Regional credits include several shows at Round House Theatre (Father Comes Home From The Wars, Two Trains Running, world premiere of Ironbound, Fahrenheit 451, Amadeus); Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (Clybourne Park); Dallas Theatre Center/The Goodman (Trinity River Plays); Rep Stage (Sunset Baby), Hangar Theatre (The Piano Lesson), Folger Theatre (The Tempest), Everyman Theatre (Gem Of The Ocean, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Hedda Gabler), Marin Theatre Company (Fetch Clay Make Man, The Convert) as well as Kennedy Center National Tours (Harlem), O’Neill Theatre Center, Ford’s Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company and Gulfshore Playhouse. He will next be seen this spring as Booker T. Washington in Ragtime at Ford’s Theatre. Russell is a graduate of Hampton University (B.A., sociology/criminal justice) and the Academy of Classical Acting at George Washington University (M.F.A.). He is a former Baltimore police officer and a founding member of Galvanize, a network for artists of color.

GAYLE SAMUELS* (Rose) received a best actress nomination from the Connecticut Critics Circle for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. Broadway: Sunset Boulevard, Grind, Dancin’, Dreamgirls. Off-Broadway: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (The Metropolitan Opera), Sistahs, Little Shop of Horrors (Ronnette), The Dark Star from Harlem (Josephine Baker). Regional: Seven Guitars, The Sunshine Boys, Crowns, Beehive, Chess, Spunk, Joe Louis Blues, The World Goes Round. TV/Film: Bull, Madame Secretary, The Americans, Twenty Good Years, The Class, Black Nativity, The Tides That Bind, HoneyBee. www.gaylesamuels.com

JEORGE BENNETT WATSON* (Bono) Grateful to be making his Pioneer Theatre Company debut, Watson was most recently seen in Fences at Triad Stages in Greensboro, N.C., playing Troy Maxson, and in Lifetime Movie Network’s upcoming untitled affair project as Det. John Ahern. Watson has trained at Washington D.C.’s Studio Theatre Acting Conservatory with Serge Seiden and Joy Zinoman, with Reed Birney at ESPA/Primary Stages and with Terry Knickerbocker at William Esper Studios and TK Acting Studios. Other theatre highlights include Zooman in Zooman & the Sign with Arena Players, (Baltimore), George in Stopkiss, Woolly Mammoth Theatre (DC), Lincoln in Topdog/Underdog, Studio Theatre (DC), Boy Willie in The Piano Lesson, Arena Stage (DC), Det. Burrows in The Glory of Living, Athena Theatre (Los Angeles), Francis/Scott in Three Sisters After Chekhov, Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble (Los Angeles), and Dutch in New Orleans, Moving Arts (Los Angeles). Television and film credits include NBC’s Homicide: Life in the Streets, HBO’s The Wire, FX’s Justified, Showtime’s Shameless, CBS’s Cold Case and Red Wall Productions’ upcoming film Saving Father. Watson will next be seen as Enobarbus in Orlando Shakespeare Company’s 2017 production of Antony & Cleopatra.

MICHAEL ANTHONY WILLIAMS* (Troy) is ecstatic to be debuting at Pioneer Theatre Company! Off-Broadway credits: Persephone at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Regional credits: Jitney and Of Mice and Men at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park; Jitney and To Kill A Mockingbird at Ford’s Theater; King Hedley II at Arena Stage; Unexplored Interior at Mosaic Theater Company; Starving at Woolly Mammoth Theatre; Jesus Hopped the “A” Train and Two Trains Running at Round House Theatre; Venus and Omnium Gatherum at Olney Theatre Center; Nomathemba with Ladysmith Black Mambazo at Steppenwolf Theatre, Crossroads Theatre and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; The Second City Theatre; Master Harold and the Boys at Studio Theatre; Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom at the Swine Palace; The Colored Museum at Victory Gardens Theater; East Texas Hot Links for the Onyx Theatre Ensemble; The Bluest Eye at Theatre Alliance, and Two Trains Running for the African Continuum Theatre Company at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Television credits: The Wire for HBO, FBI Files, and Homicide: Life on the Streets for NBC. Film credits: Losing Isaiah, The Replacements, Contact, Unbreakable and The Brave One. Williams dedicates his complete body of work to his daughter, Margarita Williams.