Nicole Wiesner

Trap Door credits

Acting
  • Occidental Express
  • How to Explain The History of Communism to Mental Patients (Romanian tour)
  • Regarding the Just
    Judith: A Parting from the Body
  • Blood on the Cat’s Neck
  • The Balcony
  • the word progress on my mother’s lips doesn’t ring true 
  • OVERWEIGHT, unimportant: MISSHAPE – A European Supper
  • First Ladies
  • Alice in Bed
  • The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant
  • The Fourth Sister
  • The Crazy Locomotive
  • People Annihilation or My Liver is Senseless
  • The Venetian Twins
  • Katzelmacher
  • Nana
  • Quills
  • The Shoemakers Automobile Graveyard
  • Ten Tiny Fingers, Nine Tiny Toes
  • Baal
  • The Homosexual, (or The Difficulty of Sexspressing Oneself)
  • La Ronde
  • Bondage

Managing Director

Nicole Wiesner (she/her/hers) joined the Trap ensemble in 1999, and currently serves as the Managing Director. Some of her favorite Trap acting credits include First Ladies (dir. Zeljko Djukic, Joseph Jefferson Citation: “Outstanding Actress”); OVERWEIGHT, unimportant: MISSHAPE (dir. Yasen Peyankov); and the title roles in The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant; Nana (dir. Beata Pilch) and Alice in Bed (Director Dado). Regionally, she has appeared at the Goodman Theatre in 2666, directed by Robert Falls and Seth Bockley; Shining City directed by Robert Falls; and Passion Play, directed by Mark Wing-Davy (After Dark Award, “Outstanding Performance”). Other credits include Shining City at the Huntington Theatre in Boston; Passion Play at Yale Repertory Theatre and Epic Theatre NYC; The Book Thief (dir. Hallie Gordon), South of Settling (dir. Adam Goldstein) and Dublin Carol (Dir. Amy Morton) at Steppenwolf Theatre; Dying City (dir. Jason Loewith) at Next Theatre, Great Men of Science (dir. Tracy Letts) at Lookingglass Theatre; and Phedre (dir. JoAnn Akalitis) at The Court Theater. She can also be seen in Catherine Sullivan’s films Ice Floes of Franz Josef Land and The Chittendens (Tate Modern), and in her theatre pieces in Chicago, NYC, Lyon (L’Opera de Lyon) and Dijon.

Gallery

Nicole Weisner and Kevin Cox are superb as tactical equals Judith and Holofernes. The course their sparring takes is cruel and perverse, but no more so than Barker’s source.

Keith Griffith, Chicago Reader (on performing in Judith: A Parting from the Body)  

The cast handles this emotional disorder with precision and grace; Wiesner is riveting as she embodies with voice, body and heart all the little earthquakes of Judith’s intrigue…

Megan Powell, Time Out Chicago (on performing in Judith: A Parting from the Body)  

Barker’s Minna is just the kind of pot that Trap Door stirs with beguiling results and director Nicole Wiesner brilliantly creates this nightmarish reality with both visual lyricism and explosive whimsy in this haunted house of catastrophic madness.

Venus Zarris, Gay Chicago Magazine (on directing Minna)

But this is otherwise pure Witkiewicz, nicely unplugged. And there’s a very courageous and intense performance from Nicole Wiesner, who plays an initially excited young woman who rides her loco straight to hell.

Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune (on performing in Crazy Locomotive)

Wiesner’s Petra is the fulcrum and the center of the production, a towering, voluptuous presence in low-cut black velvet and FM shoes, a woman who is equally powerful whether roaring with lust or whimpering with dejection.

Catey Sullivan, Windy City Times (on performing in The Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant)

Nicole Wiesner (who truly understands Schwab) 

Alan Brushoff, Around the Town (on performing in OVERWEIGHT, unimportant: MISSHAPE)

Nicole Wiesner keeps the 90 minute show vivacious at nearly every point.

Clint May, Chicago Theatre Beat (on directing The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls)

Nicole Wiesner’s bold staging for Trap Door Theatre of “Phedre“

Kerry Reid, Chicago Tribune (on directing Phedre)

Wiesner creates arresting, confounding stage images… Wiesner’s eye for the inexplicably resonant is characteristically sharp. And it is precisely from the collision of inexplicability and resonance that this show, like so many at Trap Door over the years, draws its power.  

Justin Hayford, Chicago Reader (on directing Phedre) 

 

The performances – including Nicole Wiesner as a crazed woman furiously riding a rocking horse… – are in perfect synch with Visniec’s fractured but taut language. 

Kerry Reid, Chicago Tribune (on performing in the word progress on my mother’s lips doesn’t ring true)

To cram Chevalier d’Eon’s life into just ninety minutes requires a lot of inventive staging and an unflagging pacFortunately for Chicago audiences, Trap Door Theatre and ensemble director Nicole Wiesner are well-versed in just that sort presentation, with hilarious and often fascinating results.

Jacob Davis, Around the Town (on directing Monsieur D’Eon is a Woman)

Directing
  • The Martyrdom of Peter Ohey
  • Decomposed Theatre, Episode 5
  • The White Plague
  • The Old Woman Broods
  • Monsieur D’eon is a Woman
  • Phèdre
  • The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls
  • Minna