Zach Libresco spent at least as much time on the basketball court as he did on stage in his time at East Williston’s Wheatley School.
The Mineola native said he was an athlete first — he made a Nassau County all-conference team as a senior in 2009 — but he also got time in the spotlight in school productions.
His star turn came in his junior year, he said, when he played the lead role of Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” despite looking a little young for the part.
“They drew my beard on me a little bit,” he said.
While his experiences on stage and in the classroom at Wheatley shaped his interest theater and the works of William Shakespeare, Libresco said basketball taught him lessons about teamwork that have proved fruitful in his theater career.
“Actors are players, and the key to being a good teammate is kind of knowing when you need to shoot … and knowing what your good spots on the floor are,” said Libresco, the son of Blank Slate Media columnist Michael D’Innocenzo.
Shakespeare, performance and teamwork are coming together for Lebresco in the process of creating Letter of Marque Theater Company’s production “Double Falsehood,” a play thought to be a lost Shakespeare work.
The company started a year-long collaborative process last March to produce the play, which Libresco called “a greatest hits of Shakespeare.” It opened March 12 at the Irondale Center in Brooklyn.
”The words and the story are, like, in my bones,” Libresco said. “The things in the play have been marinating for a long time.”
While he said Wheatley’s theater productions built community among the student actors, Libresco learned most of what he knows about collaborative theater work at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
Wesleyan’s liberal arts approach to teaching acting emphasized working together to solve problems, Libresco said, and the “Double Falsehood” company did a lot of that over the past year.
The actors, directors and others had many eight-hour rehearsals and went on a retreat last summer to the Catskills to grow closer, he said.
“As it is with families, sometimes it’s frustrating when there are so many people with ideas, but that’s the job of the director, that’s the job of the ensemble, to figure out how to edit and figure out how to put the story together,” Libresco said.
Libresco has long been interested in Shakespeare, he said — one moment that inspired him to pursue theater was analyzing “Romeo and Juliet” in his ninth-grade English class at Wheatley.
He memorized a monologue from “Hamlet” for extra credit in 11th grade, and the work stuck with him, he said. He adapted “Hamlet” into an “immersive” theater installation for a senior capstone project at Wesleyan.
“I don’t know if it started there (at Wheatley), but I’m sure getting the text in my body started there,” Libresco said.
Shakespeare plays have comprised much of Libresco’s work since he graduated from Wesleyan in 2013. He’s acted with the Adirondack Shakespeare Company and is currently working on a production of “Titus Andronicus” that will go before audiences for the first time later this spring.
“With Shakespeare, there isn’t subtext, and the size of the thoughts and people speaking exactly how they’re feeling — it’s a totally different way of acting,” Libresco said. … I have to speak my experience. It requires all my humanity to do, which I guess is the biggest challenge for me, and that’s why I run toward it.”
Libresco plays Julio, one of four “lovers” in “Double Falsehood.” The play deals with some uncomfortable themes, Libresco said, as it includes an off-stage rape and a “problematic” ending for one of the women.
Libresco said he’s proud of how the company handled those difficult subjects, both in the production itself and in events around it. Letter of Marque is hosting panel discussions and post-show “talkbacks” to create a dialogue about rape culture around “Double Falsehood.”
“It’s such an important conversation to engage sociopolitcally, and they’re doing a great job of engaging the community,” Libresco said.
“Double Falsehood” runs Tuesdays through Saturdays until April 12 at the Irondale Center at 85 S. Oxford St. in Brooklyn.
Shows start at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 at the door or free with an online RSVP at lomtheater.org.
Talkbacks are held after each Wednesday show, and panel discussions are held before Saturday shows at 6:30 p.m.
