About the Artist

Herbert Lee Newsome III was born in Staten Island, NY. One of 11, yeah, that's right, 11 children of Antoinette and Herbert Lee Newsome, Jr. He is an actor, writer, director and all around artist currently splitting time between New York and Los Angeles. He began his acting career as a young boy in the Off-Broadway play Black Girl  by J.E. Franklin at the Second Stage Theater staring a young Angela Bassett.   He then went on to appear in the John Sayles film The Brother From Another Planet, and James Tobak's The Pick Up Artist. After getting bit wit the bug early on, acting came in and out of his life. It wasn't until that fateful day as a sophomore economics major contemplating life in the business world, that he realized what it was he actually wanted to do. The next day, boom, changed his major to theater, and he was off. He received his BA in Theater from the University at Albany before going on to get his MFA in Acting from Penn State.

 

As an actor, he has performed in three solo shows: Freeman in Paris, In Devils’ Heaven and RL at the Crossroads. His selected theater credits include A Raisin in the Sun, The Meeting, News To Me, Macbeth, Richard III, Revenge of a King, Take Me Out, 911: A Day in the Life of a People, Re:Definition, No Place To Be Somebody  and five August Wilson plays- Ma Rainey’s Black Botton, Fences, Jitney, The Piano Lesson, Radio Golf. He has been a part of many theater festivals across the country including, the New York International Fringe Festival, The Philadelphia Fringe Festival, The National Black Theater Festival (Winston-Salem, N.C.), and around the world at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa. His Film credits include The Brother from Another Planet, The PickUp Artist, Sweet Nothings, Pimpin' Ain't Easy, Miranda  and Abandoned.

 

As a playwright he has penned two solo shows, In Devil’s Heaven and Freeman in Paris, which was honored with 2011 Humanities Scriptwriting Award presented by the Institute of African American Research at UNC-Chapel Hill. His full length play Revenge of a King, a hip-hop musical based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, has been produced in 8 cities across the country and most recently had a production at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa. He is currently working on a new solo show The Breakdown: A Homage to Hip Hop, as well as two full length play collaborations with his fellow brothers in the Arts Michael Rosenthal -Blues Over Moon Valley  and Charles Dumas-The Willie Dixon Story.

 

As a director his credits include Revenge of a King for the NY International Fringe Festival, the national tour of Roll of Thunder Hear, My Cry for the National Theater of Arts and Education, Forgivable Sins, a finalist at the Samuel French One Act Festival in NYC, Sing Black Hammer and Journey of the Spirits at the Kuntu Repertory Theater, and Topdog/Underdog at the New Horizon Theater.

 

Herb is a founding member of  THE STANDARD, an artist collective dedicated to the development of new works in the arts. The group has a successful production of Detroit ’67 by Dominique Morisseau, which was nominated for 3 NAACP theater awards for 2016.