top of page
IMG_9686.jpg

Photo Credit: Rich Soublet

THOMAS EDWARD
DAUGHERTY

AEA ACTOR

About

Returning to the stage

I am thrilled and grateful beyond words to have returned to acting in the theatre as Quinn Carney in THE FERRYMAN at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad, California.  I took a lengthy hiatus from acting while I went to law school and developed a busy employment law practice.

 

Long before law school, I had earned a BFA in Musical Theatre from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) and then worked in the theatre, based in Chicago.  Some highlights include: National Tours (RAGTIME, directed by Frank Galati, SHOWBOAT dir., Hal Prince); Kennedy Center (BOUNCE dir., Hal Prince); Goodman Theatre (ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, dir., Mary Zimmerman, BOUNCE, dir., Hal Prince); Chicago Shakespeare (AS YOU LIKE IT, WINTER’S TALE, TROILUS & CRESSIDA dir. Barbara Gaines,); Apple Tree Theatre (OLD WICKED SONGS, with Daniel J. Travanti, THE DYING GAUL, dir., Gary Griffin); Drury Lane Oakbrook (1776, THE FOREIGNER, A CHORUS LINE, BIG); Marriott Lincolnshire (HOUDINI, THE MUSICAL); Montana’s Shakespeare in the Parks (THE COUNTRY WIFE, and MACBETH (title role)). I am a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association.

Quinn Carney THE FERRYMAN at NVA.JPG
From Chicago to San Diego

We moved from Chicago to San Diego in 2010, and THE FERRYMAN is the first play I’ve done in 20 years.  Being away for so long has made me appreciate in a profound way what a gift it is to be able to do theatre. That time away, life experience, being a father, and age have changed me, and I’m finding a much deeper connection to the play and my character—at times it’s so powerful and overwhelming. I just need to get out of the way and let it happen. It’s probably the best-written play, save some Shakespeare, that I’ve ever worked on. And I am so lucky to get to do it with my son Nick, who plays my son in the play. 

 

I have been incredibly supported throughout this adventure by my entire family, especially my extremely talented wife, Jacquelyn Ritz, an actor and director who recently played the Baroness in LEMPICKA at La Jolla Playhouse, is a regular at North Coast Repertory Theatre, and is directing LOST IN YONKERS at Scripps Ranch Theater, Spring, 2023. 

The Ferryman

THE FERRYMAN

JANUARY 27 - MARCH 5, 2023

NEW VILLAGE ARTS THEATRE

ABOUT

THE FERRYMAN

THE FERRYMAN is playwright Jez Butterworth’s masterful Tony Award-winning Best Play (2019).   It is set in Armagh, Northern Ireland in 1981, during the heart of The Troubles, and deals with family, love, loyalty, duty, betrayal, loss, guilt, freedom, and the possibility for change.  My character, Quinn Carney, was formerly a member of the Irish Republican Army but walked away from the IRA because he “had enough blood” on his hands. Immediately after he walked away, his brother Seamus disappeared. The play starts ten years after Seamus vanished, and his body has just been discovered in a peat bog, shot, execution-style. In the intervening years, the multigenerational Carney family had taken in Seamus’s wife and son to live with them in their crowded farmhouse, and complications ensue. It is a thrilling, epic, contemporary play with a cast of 21 actors, a live baby, a goose, and a rabbit.

THE FERRYMAN is the winner of the 2019 Tony Award and is universally acknowledged as one of the greatest plays of the modern era. The play won the Evening Standard Theatre Award and the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Play during its West End run and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle, Outer Critics Circle, and Drama Desk Awards for Best Play for its Broadway run. Ben Brantley said in The New York Times, “An endlessly vibrant work, the real sustenance provided here comes from the sheer abundance within a work that picked up most of the awards on offer during its London run last year. This is theater as charged and cluttered and expansive as life itself. And the three and a quarter hours and 21 speaking parts required to tell its story — which is at once a shivery suspenser, a hearthside family portrait, a political tragedy, and a journey across mythic seas — barely seem long enough to contain all it has to give us.”’ “It revels in the addictive power of artfully unfolded narratives. And I mean all kinds of narratives: classical epics and homey fairy tales, barroom ballads and chronicles of hopeless love, multigenerational family sagas, and ghost stories with a body count. Yet, like a James Joyce short story in which every day and the eternal live cheek by jowl, “The Ferryman” seems to sprawl over an entire, divided country … the story embraces a multitude of exuberantly full individual scenes, of a number and rich rarely seen outside of Shakespeare. By the end of this magnificent drama, Mr. Butterworth has connected the contradictions with a skill that takes the breath away.”

JANUARY 27 - MARCH 5, 2023

NEW VILLAGE ARTS THEATRE

Press

"Thomas Edward Daugherty looks perfectly at home in the lead role of Quinn Carney..."

- Pam Kragen, The San Diego Union-Tribune 

"For Daugherty, the return to his theatre roots has been a passion many years in the making..."

- Klinedinst Attorneys

"The Ferryman is solidly staged, and its cast performs it marvelously..."

- Bill Eadie, The San Diego Story 

"New Village Arts celebrates success of 'The Ferryman'..."

- The San Diego Union-Tribune 

Featured posts on Instagram @ NewVillageArts

THE FERRYMAN

JANUARY 27 - MARCH 5, 2023

NEW VILLAGE ARTS THEATRE

Headshot 

Photo Credit: Rich Soublet

Gallery

Contact

Thomas Edward Daugherty
thomas.e.daugherty@gmail.com
312-213-8117

Thanks for submitting!

bottom of page