Our Background

Benjamin Burdick and Jessica Ires Morris are married, raising two kids and one large horse-dog and actively working in theater. Due to rehearsal, work and child care schedules, we may trade off teaching on any given evening.  Expect to see and work with both of us.

Benjamin Burdick – AEA and SAG-AFTRA

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Ben spent over 20 years in Los Angeles as a working actor, director and writer. After graduating from Yale and serving in AmeriCorps, he came to L.A. and booked a series role on a Television show quite quickly. The show only lasted one season. He’s intimately knowledgeable of the ups and downs of an acting career. He’s been a co-star, a series regular and everything in between on Television shows from ER to Arrested Development, The Mentalist, Monk, etc. He’s shot commercials, movies and web series. He also has a long list of credits in Los Angeles and regional theater. He is a two-time LA Weekly Award winner and multiple nominee for both acting and directing, served as Associate Artistic Director of the Open Fist Theater Company and has worked in major regional theaters like La Jolla Playhouse and the Ahmanson Theater. He has been positively reviewed in the LA Times, LA Weekly, Variety, Playbill, and a host of other industry rags. He is particularly adept at gritty contemporary plays and screwball / door slamming comedies. He is the current Managing Director at Boise Contemporary Theater.

Jessica Ires Morris – AEA and SAG-AFTRA

Jessica Ires Morris has worked and lived in New York, Los Angeles, and a host of cities in between. She earned a BA from Smith College in Massachusetts and a MFA from California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, where she worked on devised theatrical events and reimagined/progressive interpretations. Jessica was a long time company member of the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey, where she cut her teeth on the classics – from Shakespeare to Austen to Brecht – and won the New Jersey Press’ best supporting actress title for her interpretation of Paulina in the Winter’s Tale.  She has performed all over the country including at the Actors Theater of Louisville, The Hippodrome Theater in Florida, The Texas Repertory Theater, and several theaters in N.Y.C. and Los Angeles (she is the recipient of an LA Weekly award). She also worked abroad at the Moscow Art Theater, the Jerusalem Theater Festival and the Frictions Festival in Dijon, France. Jessica has been positively reviewed multiple times in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Variety, Playbill, LA Times and LA Weekly. She has appeared on camera in Criminal Minds and several commercials, and has done voice over for books on tape and Industrial events. She has taught BFA and MFA text analysis, theater history, and acting at CalArts, the University of Florida and BSU – and is also teaching a scene study class with the Idaho Shakespeare Festival. Most recently, she appeared in Clarkston on the BCT main stage.

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