ACTING / DIRECTING BIO
Beth Bornstein Dunnington is a performer/director/acting teacher. A member of Actor’s Equity Association and the Screen Actors Guild /American Federation of TV and Radio Artists, she has lived on the Big Island of Hawai’i since 2007, after spending two-plus decades in and just outside NYC. Beth grew up in Winthrop, Mass, and has a BFA in acting from Emerson College in Boston.
In Hawai’i, Beth wrote and starred in Que Sueñes Con Las Angelitas (a show she collaborated on with dancer / choreographer Angel Prince) which debuted at the Kahilu Theatre on the Big Island of Hawai’i, later toured the Hawaiian Islands, and then went on to Jazz at Lincoln Center in NYC. She was an actor in both productions of the Kahilu’s The Vagina Monologues, directed by Jane Sibbett and co-starring Roseanne Barr, and she played the roles of the Witch in Into the Woods and Madame Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, as well as performing in numerous concerts for the Hawai’i Performing Arts Festival. In 2019 she performed as a vocal soloist with the Kamuela Philharmonic on the Big Island.
A great passion of hers has been creating, developing, and performing new works. Some of the roles she created in new plays in New York were Doreen in Dick Beebe’s play The Hurdy Gurdy Man (New York Stage and Film), Maria in Joe Pintauro’s A Kiss To Build A Dream On (Westbeth Theatre), Gertrude in Quincy Long’s Shaker Heights (Home for Contemporary Theatre and Art), Georgia O’Keeffe in the musical Nearby Faraway (York Theatre), Penelope in Jean-Claude van Itallie’s musical version of “The Odyssey” (Westbeth Theatre), and roles in numerous new plays and musicals in NYC’s West Bank Café’s Laurie Beechman Theater.
In addition to performing in plays, musicals, and concerts in NYC and regionally, Beth has performed in a number of operas. A few favorite opera / operetta roles include Papagena in Broadway director Tom O’Horgan’s production of The Magic Flute at Connecticut Grande Opera, Susan B Anthony in Virgil Thomson /Gertrude Stein’s The Mother Of Us All in Boston, and Azuri in the (Millburn New Jersey) Papermill Playhouse’s production of The Desert Song.
For six years, was the co-artistic director of Two Island Productions, a theatre company she co-founded, dually based on the islands of NYC and Bermuda.
Beth teaches acting and musical theater for the Kahilu Theatre and is the director of the Kahilu Theatre Youth Troupe. She directed the Kahilu Theatre’s mainstage productions of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Godspell, Grease, 13-The Musical, Spring Awakening, and West Side Story, as well as a series of Broadway in Hawaii concerts. She is currently in rehearsal with the Youth Troupe for the musical revue All Together Now, a global event taking place on November 12th to 14th, 2021, performing in all 50 states as well as 50 countries, celebrating theatres reopening after Covid-19. The Kahilu’s production will represent Hawai’i.
She is on the faculty of the Hawai’i Performing Arts Festival as a stage director and acting teacher. She directed their mainstage productions of The Last Five Years, Company, Big Island Broadway, and a series of concerts. She directed Stars of Tomorrow, the opening concert of the 2021 HPAF season at the Kahilu Theatre. In 2022, she’ll direct the opening mainstage production for HPAF, the chamber opera As One. She created HPAF’s Preteen Singers program, which she had the great pleasure of directing for six years.
Beth collaborated with actress / writer Joanna’s Lipari’s to create her one-woman show, Activities of Daily Living, which Beth directed at the Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice, California (workshop production), with a World Premiere in January 2020 at the Kahilu Theatre’s Mike Luce Studio. ADL has since gone on tour, with a scheduled production at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland (summer 2021).
When she lived in NYC, Beth appeared regularly in national commercials and voiceovers. She studied acting with Uta Hagen.
Beth is a vice president of the Board of Directors of the Kahilu Theatre.
Beth Bornstein Dunnington is a performer/director/acting teacher. A member of Actor’s Equity Association and the Screen Actors Guild /American Federation of TV and Radio Artists, she has lived on the Big Island of Hawai’i since 2007, after spending two-plus decades in and just outside NYC. Beth grew up in Winthrop, Mass, and has a BFA in acting from Emerson College in Boston.
In Hawai’i, Beth wrote and starred in Que Sueñes Con Las Angelitas (a show she collaborated on with dancer / choreographer Angel Prince) which debuted at the Kahilu Theatre on the Big Island of Hawai’i, later toured the Hawaiian Islands, and then went on to Jazz at Lincoln Center in NYC. She was an actor in both productions of the Kahilu’s The Vagina Monologues, directed by Jane Sibbett and co-starring Roseanne Barr, and she played the roles of the Witch in Into the Woods and Madame Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, as well as performing in numerous concerts for the Hawai’i Performing Arts Festival. In 2019 she performed as a vocal soloist with the Kamuela Philharmonic on the Big Island.
A great passion of hers has been creating, developing, and performing new works. Some of the roles she created in new plays in New York were Doreen in Dick Beebe’s play The Hurdy Gurdy Man (New York Stage and Film), Maria in Joe Pintauro’s A Kiss To Build A Dream On (Westbeth Theatre), Gertrude in Quincy Long’s Shaker Heights (Home for Contemporary Theatre and Art), Georgia O’Keeffe in the musical Nearby Faraway (York Theatre), Penelope in Jean-Claude van Itallie’s musical version of “The Odyssey” (Westbeth Theatre), and roles in numerous new plays and musicals in NYC’s West Bank Café’s Laurie Beechman Theater.
In addition to performing in plays, musicals, and concerts in NYC and regionally, Beth has performed in a number of operas. A few favorite opera / operetta roles include Papagena in Broadway director Tom O’Horgan’s production of The Magic Flute at Connecticut Grande Opera, Susan B Anthony in Virgil Thomson /Gertrude Stein’s The Mother Of Us All in Boston, and Azuri in the (Millburn New Jersey) Papermill Playhouse’s production of The Desert Song.
For six years, was the co-artistic director of Two Island Productions, a theatre company she co-founded, dually based on the islands of NYC and Bermuda.
Beth teaches acting and musical theater for the Kahilu Theatre and is the director of the Kahilu Theatre Youth Troupe. She directed the Kahilu Theatre’s mainstage productions of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Godspell, Grease, 13-The Musical, Spring Awakening, and West Side Story, as well as a series of Broadway in Hawaii concerts. She is currently in rehearsal with the Youth Troupe for the musical revue All Together Now, a global event taking place on November 12th to 14th, 2021, performing in all 50 states as well as 50 countries, celebrating theatres reopening after Covid-19. The Kahilu’s production will represent Hawai’i.
She is on the faculty of the Hawai’i Performing Arts Festival as a stage director and acting teacher. She directed their mainstage productions of The Last Five Years, Company, Big Island Broadway, and a series of concerts. She directed Stars of Tomorrow, the opening concert of the 2021 HPAF season at the Kahilu Theatre. In 2022, she’ll direct the opening mainstage production for HPAF, the chamber opera As One. She created HPAF’s Preteen Singers program, which she had the great pleasure of directing for six years.
Beth collaborated with actress / writer Joanna’s Lipari’s to create her one-woman show, Activities of Daily Living, which Beth directed at the Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice, California (workshop production), with a World Premiere in January 2020 at the Kahilu Theatre’s Mike Luce Studio. ADL has since gone on tour, with a scheduled production at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland (summer 2021).
When she lived in NYC, Beth appeared regularly in national commercials and voiceovers. She studied acting with Uta Hagen.
Beth is a vice president of the Board of Directors of the Kahilu Theatre.