My Bio

Paul de Vries started acting as an elementary student. He had limited opportunities to act at his school, so his parents, correctly assuming he would love the stage, signed him up for the Hampshire Shakespeare Company's acting workshops for children. For a while, these workshops were his sole source of acting. As a Middle School student, he found his theatrical outlet through the Latin Club. They would produce classically themed plays and tour the elementary schools to recruit the incoming class to take Latin. When he was in the eighth grade, his Latin teacher, Mr. Smith, directed a production of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Paul was given the part of Brutus, his first major Shakespearean role. This was a very impressionable experience that fanned the fire fueling his drive to act.

Around the same time as he was performing in the Latin Club's plays, Paul filled ensemble roles in the Hampshire Shakespeare Company's performances of Romeo & Juliet and Thomas of Woodstock. He was even able to understudy a minor role in the latter, which he considered his big break.

Paul found several acting opportunities as a student at the Amherst Regional High School. He participated in the short plays as well as the full length musicals. He did not limit his performances to school-based productions, participating in the Amherst Leisure Community Theater's production of Fiddler on the Roof and two plays with Hampshire Shakespeare, doing the mainstage and the Young Company productions. He finished his high school run in theater by playing Billy Flynn in Chicago and writing and directing his own play, The Blackmail Occasion, a murder mystery with a cast of high school stereotypes. Unfortunately, the manuscript for this play has been lost with the death of his family's computer.

Paul continued acting throughout his time at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He played August Sonders in Tom Stoppard's On the Razzle. The following summer, he played the part of Salanio in the Hampshire Shakespeare Company's production of The Merchant of Venice. His last major role as a college student was that of Gaston in Disney's Beauty & the Beast performed by the Amherst Leisure Community Theater. He believes his most interesting experince was in a staged reading of a play, 'Til All the Boys Come Home, written by the director's mother. The play was set in Scotland, so Paul had to learn a Scottish accent for the part.

This year, Paul has been cast in three different Shakespearean plays. He has already played both Claudio and Elbow (an odd double-casting he attributes to a shortage of cast members) in Measure for Measure, and Tybalt in Romeo & Juliet. He most recently played Monsieur le Beau in As You Like It.