Ron Wells is very happy to be making his first appearance with the wonderful 16th Street Theater as Tommy in The End Of The Tour. He got his start onstage at the tender age of 16, in a triumphal, high-school follies performance as an itinerant bratwurst on a quest for the great rye bun nirvana of his dreams. The audience was captivated, and the thrill he got from the crowd’s approval that night was so powerful, it set him on his own life-long journey to find the intensity of that feeling once again.
For the past 22 years, he’s been looking for it in and around Chicago, and was most recently seen as Rufus Reed in three separate productions in 2009 of the highly-acclaimed play These Shining Liveswith Rivendell Theatre. In 2008, he won a Non-AEA Jeff Award as Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the killer Sean in A Prayer For My Daughter at Mary-Arrchie Theatre. Among his other favorite roles are Annibale Carracci in Caravaggio (Silk Road Theatre Project), Dr. Myklos Nyiszli in The Grey Zone (A Red Orchid Theatre), Roy in A Trip To Bountiful (American Theatre Company); Henry Macy in Ballad Of The Sad Café (Footsteps Theatre), Roger Chillingworth in The Scarlet Letter (Footsteps Theatre), along with his work as the voice of Capt. Zidgel in the animated series 3-2-1 Penguins! (Big Idea Productions). Ron has been seen numerous times through the years at Chicago Dramatists (where he is an Associate Artist), as well as Steppenwolf, Stage Left, City Lit, American Blues Theatre, Profiles Theatre, Citadel Theatre, Caffeine Theatre, among many, many others.
And has he ever recaptured the thrill of that first performance? Not quite…but then again, he figures great ‘sausage’ roles probably come just once in a lifetime. |
