Open Menu Close Menu
Join Donate
Join Donate
About CAST/ CREATIVE

The Grief Eater Near North Bender

ABOUT

GET TICKETS JOIN NOW & SAVE
Good Neighbor Program Directions Accessibility Calendar

By Dylan Guerra
Directed by Dustin Wills
Produced in association with Roundabout Theatre Company

2026/27 Season

January 21, 2027—March 21, 2027

Read Synopsis

A creature stalks the woods near North Bender. It kills the person you love most, erasing them from your memory. So a hunting party forms to track it down before it feeds again.

This surreal comic fable by Dylan Guerra, directed by Dustin Wills, follows a grieving ex, his fiercely loyal sister and a partner who can’t remember the man he loved as they join forces in a local pub to bring this creature down and reclaim what they’ve lost. Silver bullets are forged. Old wounds reopen. And these unlikely comrades confront the fact that restoring what they lost might hurt more than losing it.

The Grief Eater Near North Bender is a fierce and darkly funny descent into love, loss, and the cost of facing what we’d rather outrun. Ready or not.

***

The Grief Eater Near North Bender is produced in association with Roundabout Theatre Company and will be performed at the Laura Pels Theatre in the Harold & Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre.

If you’re a member of NYTW and Roundabout and want to shift your membership package, please contact Justin at 646-793-3215.

CAST / CREATIVE

  • Kyle Beltran

    Angler

    Broadway: The Cherry Orchard, In the Heights (& First National Tour). Select Off-Broadway: A Case for the Existence of God (Signature, Drama Desk & Lortel noms), Find Me Here (Clubbed Thumb), Blue Ridge (Atlantic), Fire In Dreamland (Public), Tin Cat Shoes (Clubbed Thumb), The Amateurs (Vineyard), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Public), Head of Passes (Public), The Flick (Barrow Street), Gloria (Vineyard), The Fortress of Solitude (Public), Choir Boy (MTC, AUDELCO Award), 10 Things to Do Before I Die (2ST). Regional: Arena Stage, Williamstown, Goodman, DTC, Steppenwolf, Yale Rep, The Old Globe. TV/Film: Ramon Fisher on “American Rust: Broken Justice” (Prime), “American Horror Story” (FX), “Inventing Anna” (Netflix), “Olga Dies Dreaming” (Hulu, pilot), “American Rust” (Showtime), “David Makes Man” (OWN/HBO Max), “The Shivering Truth” (Adult Swim), “Horace and Pete” (Pig Newton), “The Big C” (Showtime), “Unforgettable” (CBS). BFA in Drama, Carnegie Mellon

  • Florencia Lozano

    Tomlin

    Building (By Colin Quinn, Dir By Vince Piazza), All Of Me (New Group), Brooklyn Laundry (MTC), Wet Brain (Nominated For Best Actress From Lucille Lortel Awards) and Placebo (Playwrights’ Horizons) Maestra and Shuttle, Spindle, Needle (Clubbed Thumb), Rinse, Repeat (Signature), Devil Of Choice (Labyrinth) And She Would Stand Like This (Movement Theatre Co), Winners (EST), Red Dog Howls (NYTW), Macbeth (Public’s Delacorte), Privilege (Second Stage), Last Easter (MCC), Where’s My Money? (MTC/LAB), Dirty Story (LAB). TV Includes: “Bull,” “The Baker and the Beauty,” “Gossip Girl,” “Blue Bloods,” “Ugly Betty,” “Law and Order: SVU & CI,” “The Mysteries of Laura,” “Madame Secretary,” “Kevin Can Wait,” “The Blacklist and Enemy Within.” “Keep Breathing” and “Narcos” (Netflix), “One Life to Live” (ABC). Films include: Life After You (which she also co-wrote, available on all streaming platforms), Crybaby Bridge, Destroy All Girls, Perfect Stranger, and Veronika Decides to Die. Member Of LAByrinth and EST, Usual Suspect at NYTW. Her play: Underneathmybed was produced at The Rattlestick Playwrights’ Theatre and her play Fun With Panic Attacks was produced at INTAR. Her new play Peluca Ensangrentada is in LAB’s barn series at 59 east 59th. MFA, NYU. BA, Brown. Upcoming: The Annunciation (Playwrights’ Horizons)

  • Annie McNamara

    Maryanne

    Annie originated the role of “Alana” in Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play on Broadway, receiving a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Selected theater credits: Iowa (Playwrights Horizons, Lortel nomination for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical); We’re Gonna Be Ok (Humana/ATL); Rapture, Blister, Burn (Huntington Theatre Company) and the original Lenora in Jenny Schwartz’s God’s Ear. As a member of Elevator Repair Service, Annie performed nationally & internationally in Gatz, Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf and The Sound and The Fury. Annie is a Clubbed Thumb affiliated artist, working on innumerable new plays over the past 25 years. On screen: Blue Jasmine, “Orange is the New Black,” “The Knick,” “Mozart in the Jungle,” “The Good Fight,” “Severance,” 3 Birthdays and “Hello Tomorrow” with Billy Crudup.

  • Marquis Kofi Rodriguez

    Noland

    Marquis is an actor & writer from Brooklyn, NY. He’s been in things like “When They See Us” (Netflix) and “Modern Love” (Amazon), but when he was eleven, he played Young Simba in the Lion King & he’s been chasing that high ever since.

  • Blake Russell

    The Shepherd

    Grateful to be in North Bender with Roundabout and NYTW. Broadway: Take Me Out, Slave Play. Selected Theatre: The Glory of the World (BAM), Julius Caesar (The Acting Company), Play On! Shakespeare (Classic Stage, Oregon Shakespeare Festival), The Humana Festival, and many Chicago storefront theaters. Screen: “The Four Seasons” (Netflix), “The Good Fight” (CBS), “The Blacklist” (NBC), Variations (Juilliard). Producer: HomeBase Theater Collective, The Chicago Home Theater Festival, Self Care Saturdays. Juilliard Group 51. Thanks to Mom and Dad, Dustin, and Dylan.

  • Pete Simpson

    Byron

    Broadway: Is This a Room (as Justin Garrick, a role he originated in prior productions Off-Broadway, including the Vineyard Theatre). Off-Broadway: Indian Princesses (The Atlantic), Berlindia (The Tank), The Wind & The Rain (En Garde Arts/Vineyard), Annie Baker’s Infinite Life at the Atlantic Theatre and London’s National. A member of Elevator Repair Service, Pete appeared as Tom Buchanan in the multiple-award winning Gatz in NYC and internationally. Additional NYC theatre: The Seagull (ERS), Angelo in Measure for Measure (Public Theater/ ERS); Drew in Straight White Men (Public Theater); Mike Campbell in The Select/The Sun Also Rises (New York Theater Workshop); North Atlantic Wooster Group (opposite Willem Dafoe); Lunch in Tincat Shoes and Dad in California (Clubbed Thumb); Edmund in Lear (Soho Rep). Pete is a vet of over 5,000 performances with Blue Man Group (Off Broadway and international tours, including writing/training/directing contributions). Regional: Denver Center, Williamstown, Westport Country Playhouse, NY Stage and Film. Screen: “Marriage Story;” “Morning Glory;” “Lincoln in the Bardo;” “Gotham,” “Law and Order.” 2017 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence. @peterksimpsonjr

  • Dylan Guerra

    Playwright

    DYLAN GUERRA is a NYC-based queer Latine writer/director originally from Miami. His short film “Didn’t Think I’d See You Here” premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. He was a writer on the twice Emmy-nominated third season of HBO Max’s “The Other Two” (Season 3)—on which he also appeared as an actor. He is set to direct a feature he wrote, “Other Gay Demons” for Shudder, with Picturestart and John Legend’s Get Lifted. He has various television series in development with A24, Temple Hill, and Hisako Films. As a playwright, Dylan is the recipient of the 2026 Weissberger/Harris Award for Playwriting, the Playwrights Horizons’ Winegarten Commission, MTC’s Sloane Commission, was shortlisted for the Bruntwood prize and currently has a commission at Roundabout for his next play. He has been a member of Ars Nova’s Playgroup, Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writer’s Group, EST’s Youngblood and P73’s Interstate 73. His solo-show “Find Him” recurred off-broadway at Ars Nova. His most recent play “Signaling” was presented at the American Museum of Natural History and in MTC’s Snowden Series. Dylan was the host of AMC’s online entertainment platform “Fear HQ” for two seasons. He holds a BFA in theater from SMU.

  • Dustin Wills

    Director

    DUSTIN WILLS is a stage director and designer for theatre and opera. Upcoming productions include Jerome at Playwrights Horizons, Wold Meteor by Kate Attwell, Verdi’s Falstaff, a new version of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, and an adaptation of Aeschylus’ The Oresteia in Copenhagen, Denmark. Recent directing credits include Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real starring Pamela Anderson, The Counterfeit Opera and Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro featuring Anthony Roth Costanzo at Little Island (Best Theater of 2024, New York Magazine), Hansol Jung’s Wolf Play (2023 Lucille Lortel Award for Directing), Six Characters (Lincoln Center), Wet Brain (Playwrights Horizons & MCC), Montag (Soho Rep), Eugene Onegin (Heartbeat Opera), and Romeo and Juliet (National Asian American Theatre Company). Dustin has devised new work with Teatro L’Arciliuto in Rome, Italy, trained with Augusto Boal in Theatre of the Oppressed legislative performance, and for a couple of years gave rogue tours of the Vatican. He is a 2023 Obie Award winner, Princess Grace Award recipient, and Baryshnikov Center Artist Resident 2018. He teaches for the Directing and Playwriting programs at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale.

NEWS

Bios are provided by each artist. Where opinions are expressed, they represent individual views. We ask everyone attending an event to read and embrace the NYTW Core Values. If you’d like to tell us about your experience at NYTW, email us at LetsChat@nytw.org.

Home Join Donate
Tickets Directions Contact
Admin Office: 212-780-9037
Box Office: 212-460-5475
Privacy Policy