ANDREW LUKE CUTLER
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Acting
I've been acting professionally since just before I graduated from the University of Chicago as a Theater and Performance Studies major in 2012. Over the course of my career, I have appeared onstage in more than twenty plays, as well as a number of festivals and other short form projects. On this page, you can find information about some select favorites from my production history, in Chicago and beyond. To view my acting résumé, click here. Full acting credits are available on request. 

Botticelli in the Fire

Photo by Evan Hanover
Botticelli in the Fire. Photo by Evan Hanover.
​By Jordan Tannahill

Lorenzo De' Medici

First Floor Theater
The Den, Chicago


Playboy Sandro Botticelli has it all: talent, fame, good looks. He also has the ear – and the wife – of Lorenzo de Medici, as well as the Renaissance’s hottest young apprentice, Leonardo Da Vinci. But while at work on his breakthrough commission, ‘The Birth of Venus’, Botticelli’s devotion to pleasure and beauty is put to the ultimate test. As the plague sweeps through the city, the charismatic friar Savonarola starts to stoke the fires of dissent against the liberal elite. Botticelli finds the life he knows breaking terrifyingly apart, forcing him to choose between love and survival. Jordan Tannahill’s hot-blooded queering of Renaissance Italy questions the value of art at the collapse of society.

"Cutler and Barron excel at playing the cat-and-mouse game of high-society spouses who are far less sure of each other and themselves than they let on." - Kerry Reid, The Chicago Reader

"The battling Medicis - played with humor and power by Neala Barron and Andrew Cutler..." - Delven Shaw, Chicago Stage and Screen.

"Andrew Cutler (h/h) is a perfectly smashing Lorenzo De Medici..." - Sarz Maxwell, Buzz Center Stage

"
First Floor Theater company member Andrew Cutler is a strong, intense and frightening Lorenzo de’ Medici..." - Colin Douglas, Chicago Theatre Review

Plano

Picture
Plano. Photo by Gracie Meier
By Will Arbery
Directed by Audrey Francis 

Steve

First Floor Theater/Steppenwolf LookOut
Steppenwolf, Chicago


Tonight, and later, and earlier, three sisters (no, not those ones) are stricken with a series of strange plagues. Isabel's got pains. Anne's got slugs. And Genevieve doesn't want to talk about hers. She just wants you to eat the damn hummus (she made it!) Fresh from its wildly successful Off-Broadway debut and remount that TimeOut NY called “experimental theater perfection,” Plano is “as funny as it is powerfully disturbing” (Vulture.) Steppenwolf Ensemble Member Audrey Francis returns to direct at First Floor Theater, where she previously co-directed FFT’s first production in 2012.

"The cast is stellar across the board..."  – Alex Huntsberger, TimeOut Chicago

"...you always feel like you are having a substantial kind of evening, alongside gifted Chicago actors, who value your time and understand ensemble, unease, sisterhood," – Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

Hooded; or Being Black for Dummies

By Terreance Arvelle Chisholm
Directed by Mikael Burke

Fielder/Dionysus

First Floor Theater
The Den, Chicago​

Marquis and Tru are both fourteen year old black boys, but they exist in two totally different worlds. Marquis is a book smart prep-schooler living in the affluent suburb of Achievement Heights; while Tru is a street savvy kid from deep within the inner city of Baltimore. Their worlds overlap one day in a holding cell. Tru decides that Marquis has lost his “blackness” and pens a how-to manual entitled “Being Black for Dummies.” He assumes the role of professor, but Marquis proves to be a reluctant pupil. They butt heads, debate, wrestle, and ultimately prove that Nietzsche and 2pac were basically saying the same thing.

The cast received a Non-Equity Jeff Award Nomination for best Ensemble in 2019.  The Production as a whole was also nominated.

Red Bowl at the Jeffs

By Beth Hyland
Directed by Rebecca Willingham

Andy/Tuzenbach

The Sound,
The Frontier, Chicago

​
The group of college friends who started Red Bowl Ensemble have been plugging away in Chicago's storefront theater scene for years, but now they’ve finally made it: to the Non-Equity Joseph Jefferson Awards, that is. Loosely inspired by Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters, Red Bowl at the Jeffs is a bittersweet comedy about a group of young artists dealing with ambition, failure, friendship, and making it to Moscow.

"The exceptional ensemble plays her well-defined types..." - Kevin Greene, NewCity Chicago Stage


“Willingham gets supremely unguarded performances out of her top-notch young cast...” – Max Maller, Chicago Reader
We're Gonna Be Okay
By Basil Kreimendahl
Directed by Lisa Peterson

Jake

2017 Humana Festival of New American Plays
Actors Theatre of Louisville

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, two average American families build a slapdash bomb shelter on their shared property line. With nuclear warfare looming, they wonder: is it the end? The end of baseball…and table manners…and macramé? But as they fret about the fall of civilization, they start to worry that something more personal is at stake. A slyly hilarious, compassionate look at anxiety in America, We’re Gonna Be Okay is about finding the courage to face who we are—and who we want to be.


“an outstanding cast…” – Marty Rosen, LEO Weekly
The Many Deaths of Nathan Stubblefield
By Jeff Augustin, Sarah DeLappe, Claire Kiechel, Ramiz Monsef
Directed by Eric Hoff

Various Roles
​
2017 Humana Festival of New American Plays
Actors Theatre of Louisville


The mysterious demise of a Kentucky inventor—and other stories of visionaries from the Bluegrass State—inspire a play that explores the nature of innovation and the myths we tell about it. Writing for the nineteen actors in this season’s Professional Training Company, four playwrights boldly celebrate unsung dreamers, unlikely breakthroughs, and the beauty (and occasional hilarity) of failure.​

“Haunting and beautiful…” – Elizabeth Kramer, The Courier Journal
A Christmas Carol
By Charles Dickens
​Adapted by Barbara Field
Directed by Drew Fracher

Peter Cratchit, Various Ensemble

Actors Theatre of Louisville


Celebrate the warmth of the holidays with Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future in this delightful take on an old favorite. A beloved family tradition for four decades, Actors Theatre’s rendition of Dickens’ classic tale is brought to new life with visual splendor and joyous music.


​
World Builders
By Johnna Adams
Directed by Jesse Roth

Max

First Floor Theater
Collaboraction, Chicago

A new drug has been developed to suppress the complex internal worlds of those with schizoid personality disorder. Max and Whitney are two participants in a clinical trial, and as the drug begins to take effect, they must choose which dream to pursue: their disparate fantasies or a future together. Johnna Adams, playwright of the 2014 Chicago hit, Gidion’s Knot, presents a funny, intimate, and beautifully observed love story about what it really means to be “cured.”


"...watch this excellent actor subtly strip away his protective shell..." – Chicago Theatre Review
Solstice
By Zinnie Harris
Directed by Karen Kessler

Adie

A Red Orchid Theatre, Chicago

In a war-torn world, in an unnamed city divided by a river–and religion, politics, and money– a devout candlemaker, his sick wife, and their son struggle to survive. When they learn of a plan for their side of the river to be mined for minerals, and, worse, that their son has taken drastic action against their oppressors, their lives dramatically change. Zinnie Harris’ otherworldly play explores terrorism and a family attempting to keep ahold of their faith and each other in a world torn apart by violence and inequality–a world we often fear ours becoming.

"a soulful Andrew Cutler (Adie) and zealous Sarah Price (Sita) are a frenzy of emotional turmoil" – Chicago Theater Beat


​
Polaroid Stories
By Naomi Iizuka
Directed by Hutch Pimentel

Skinheadboy

First Floor Theatre
Red Tape Theater, Chicago

Polaroid Stories, an explosive re-imagining of Ovid's Metamorphoses, blended interviews from street-based youth and sex workers with ancient myth. The production took place in the underbelly of a city where junkies scheme, lovers run and the lost wander. It was a refuge for those living on the edge of society. In her script, Iizuka illuminates the depths of a metropolis with her chaotic elegy of desire, desperation and transcendence. FFT's production explored the complex intersection of two different modes of storytelling, documentary and mythology, and the power of their confluence.

"A powerful cast and sensory experience..." – TimeOut Chicago

​
Sexual Perversity in Chicago
By David Mamet
Directed by Will Bishop and Audrey Francis

Bernie

First Floor Theater
The Den, Chicago

Under the co-direction of Will Bishop and Audrey Francis of Black Box Acting Studio, this production allowed the audience to experience Bernie, Dan, Deb, and Joan navigate their friendships and relationships alike within the walls of an immersive dive bar. Every night, in between the early and late night performances, the Perversity bar remained open and hosted Chicago musicians playing acoustic sets. First Floor Theater’s inaugural production invited you to join these four characters in celebrating the highs and lows of being young in Chicago.

"Andrew Cutler...delivers a credible, side-splitting performance." -- Chicago Reader
Tea and Sympathy
By Robert Anderson
Directed by David New

Tom Lee

The Artistic Home

Stage 773, Chicago

Behind the closed doors of a seemingly idyllic boarding school, one boy struggles with what it means to be a man. A woman realizes her marriage has taken a very wrong turn. Drawn together, the two discover the personal cost of trying to fit in as they dance around illicit emotions and head toward a relationship that is much more than an offering of tea and sympathy.

"[Tummelson] and Cutler make a pair to root for..." – 
New City Stage
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  • About
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