Leslie Pasternack is an actor, director, playwright and dramaturg working on the NH/MA seacoast.She is the owner of Lemon Punch Theatre Lab. She holds her Ph.D. in Theatre History from the University of Texas at Austin and is also a graduate of the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre. She spent nine years teaching theatre history and acting on the college level, first at Northeastern University in Boston and then at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA. She has also taught workshops in stage combat, mask performance, commedia, and physical presentation at venues including Dartmouth College, Methodist University, The Actors Studio of Newburyport, Gould Academy, and NH Theatre Project. Recent directing credits include Trifles & Escaped Alone at the Firehouse Center for the Arts; The Revolutionists, also at the Firehouse; the performance/outreach series MAKE SURE IT’S ME/nh, based on Kate Wenner’s play about Traumatic Brain Injury in the military; Caryl Churchill’s A Number; Albee’s The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?; Mike Kimball’s Best Enemies, Duck and Cover and the premiere of Patience Boston; and Will Eno’s Tragedy: a tragedy. Leslie’s solo shows have played in Allentown, Newburyport, Boston, New York City, Portsmouth, Concord, MA and Providence, RI. Her masked solo show, Clean Room, earned the 2012 Seacoast Spotlight Awards for Best Original Script and Best Actress. In 2014, Leslie portrayed Dorothy Vaughan in Kent Stephens’ Strawbery Banke play, Saving Portsmouth and in 2018 she played John Wesley Powell in NHPT’s production of Men on Boats. Leslie mentors an incarcerated playwright through the PEN America Center’s Prison Writing Program and served for four years as a Board Member of HAVEN, New Hampshire’s largest violence prevention and support services agency. For the Clean Room promotional trailer, created by Shay Willard, click here. To watch a video of Leslie and her mask characters being interviewed by Bill Humphreys of Portsmouth Public Media TV, click here. For more information about MAKE SURE IT’S ME/nh, visit the MSIM page here.

Contact: Leslie “at” lesliepasternack “dot” com