On Monday, July 6th, film star and Winchester native Anthony Carrigan returned to his hometown to spend time with local music and theater students at the Winchester Cooperative Theatre for Children. Carrigan is known for his breakout role as the relentlessly positive Chechen mobster Noho Hank in 32 episodes of the HBO Series Barry (2018-2023, info HERE), who he described as a “favorite… a serious dude who is a ray of sunshine, like a cartoon scorpion.” 
His Path to Superman
Carrigan described his performing career as “incrementally building” from local musical theater work and Shakespearian training (in Boston and New Hampshire) to working on The Flash, continuing with its Casting Director into new projects such as Gotham and (eventually) the HBO show Barry and roles in several contemporary films [read the complete list HERE]. He has been nominated for three Emmys as an Outstanding Supporting Actor, once for Outstanding Performance as a Male Actor and four times for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series. His nuanced and often humorous portrayals of complex characters have won him devoted followings from diverse, discerning audiences.
The 43-year-old actor recently played the shape-shifting Metamorpho in last summer’s DC blockbuster Superman (2025), a role that requires “five and half hours in the makeup chair” [details HERE]. That film features a new score inspired by John Williams’ original theme, in turn based on Strauss’ Tod und Verklärung. Listen to a discussion of the new adaptation of the theme HERE and read a musical analysis of William’s original HERE]: you can watch Carrigan help Superman escape from Lex Luthor’s pocket universe in this clip [HERE].
LOCAL INFLUENCES
An alumnus of the Winchester Cooperative Theatre for Children (info HERE), founded in 1979 by Director Cathy Alexander, Carrigan spoke to a rapt audience of 70 children and a dozen staff members this week about his early musical theater roles and lessons learned, both locally and at Carnegie Mellon. He started in Alexander’s program in fourth grade as a student at Ambrose School, noting that his most memorable musical experience was playing Fagin in Lionel Bart’s Oliver at McCall Middle School, “and my beard falling off mid-song, onto the floor right in front of me. I looked down as I was singing, and thought, ‘Oh, no!’ I remember stepping on it, and doing a pose where I kicked, grabbed it, and put it right back on. Something that I was most terrified of happening… it actually did happen. And the lesson there is, you can think on your feet a lot better than you do in your imagination. You trust yourself as a performer, pay attention, and listen, which is also an important part of improv. Performing is very improvisational, and it’s one of the skills I have taken with me into my career as a professional actor, from Shakespeare in the Park in New York to doing television series to being on the biggest film sets imaginable. It all comes down to the same building blocks.”
Carrigan praised Cathy Alexander as “such a wonderful gift to me, for providing a foundation for what I’ve carried with me into Emmy-award nominated shows, huge movies like Superman… to explore, to have fun with… Some of it is technical, like how to be heard and understood, and some of it depends on your willingness to share who you are with an audience. I encourage everyone to take acting classes.” He reminisced about “where it all began” in Winchester, including “my very first role as Wilkes the Pirate in the musical Peter Pan. I loved it, I gave it my all, and I still have the highlighted script. The next year I played the March Hare, and I had so much fun that I continued on to a bigger musical role in Oliver [based on Dickens’ Oliver Twist].” He gave examples of how doing a lot with a small part has led to parts being expanded with “more to do” added for established characters he has played. “Every role matters, and you matter, because you’re bringing it to life.”
Carrigan noted two favorite Winchester High School teachers: Señor Day, a Spanish teacher “who could really hold a room” and Lorin Maloney who taught Social Studies from 1974-2009. He told humorous anecdotes about the importance of focus and intensity from his years as a student of the Bulgarian director Mladen Kiselov, who grew up watching his own mother direct productions at the State Opera House in Ruse, directed his own productions at the Yale Repertory Theater and Long Wharf Theatre in the early 1980s, and later taught on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon (1992-2008).
TIPS FROM A SEASONED PERFORMER
In the form of a relaxed master class, Carrigan discussed the challenges of auditioning, overcoming shyness through character work and the rehearsal process, dealing with rejection during the casting process, seeking out widely divergent roles to play, and his process for learning lines. He encouraged the young performers to work on the smallest details as if they were “the most important line” in a larger work and to find things in a text or a character that they could personally relate to, rather than mimicking someone else’s interpretation. “You’ll begin to find things that make sense or are exciting to you. And then you’ll be able to sing the notes that you’ve been practicing with a little bit more understanding of what you’re singing. And of WHY you’re singing it.”
In answer to a student question, he paraphrased and explored a quote attributed to Bob Fosse: “The time to sing is when your emotional level is too high to just speak anymore, and the time to dance is when your emotions are just too strong to only sing about how you feel.” He encouraged the young singers to begin with the text of a song, and then “you’ll reach a point when the words alone won’t do it, so they literally have to turn into music. There’s a moment when you’re delivering dialogue, but what you have to convey or get across to the other person or to the audience becomes so important, that you have to break into song.” He emphasized learning complete scenes so that “each line on the page becomes something important to you” and described how he explores his own emotional reactions to each line in order to develop the physicality of a character.”
He continued, “The beautiful thing about the stage is that when you get up here, you can be whoever you want. You don’t have to be shy, because you can try things out. What would happen if I TALKED REALLY LOUD RIGHT NOW? It might seem silly, but it might also feel really good. To experiment. To take chances. Even though I was shy as a younger person, there was also a part of me that really wanted to connect with other people, to be seen, and to be understood. And as an audience member for a concert or a TV show, you’ll discover, ‘I really like the feeling that this gives me.’ You can find that feeling right here, on the stage. And what I do on film sets is just the same: we are tapping into how the arts make us feel. That’s why everyone is so excited to see plays and live shows: they’re appreciative of feeling something. So what you’re doing is very important.”
Carrigan concluded by emphasizing the importance of listening to a musical or dramatic artist. “When you’re listening, you lean in. You don’t know what it is that you’re about to hear. There’s a magical quality to that. When you’re listening, you don’t know what the other character’s about to say. Then they speak: now you know, and you can react. You’re never just waiting for your cue. Instead, you’re listening, you’re thinking, and you’re feeling what they’re saying. Your job is to think about what you feel, what your character feels, and what you want your audience to feel. So ultimately, interpreting is about listening and remaining connected.”
FURTHER CONNECTIONS
Winchester Cooperative Theater for Children is open to any students who are rising 2nd-9th graders (in summer) and who are residents of the town of Winchester (grades 6-8 in Fall, grades 4-7 in Spring). Director Cathy Alexander produces three fully-staged Broadway musicals and one summer vocal cabaret each year (July 22 this year). Recent alumni of the program have gone on to major in the arts and education and to perform at Emerson, Harvard, BU, Salem State, Ithaca, Syracuse, Connecticut College, Columbia, NYU, Wesleyan, and George Washington U. Singers from the program have sung with the Boston Symphony Children’s Chorus, the Boston Children’s Chorus [BMInt article HERE], Tanglewood, Opera51, and starred in operas premiered by White Snake Productions [BMInt review HERE]. Alumni of the theater orchestra, under the direction of this author, have continued their musical studies and graduated from Juilliard, NEC, Eastman, Lawrence, Hunter College, Bard, NYU, and Berklee. This summer’s production on July 23-24 will feature fifty young singers from the Boston area with live accompaniment [Info HERE].
Carrigan graduated from Winchester High and attended Carnegie Mellon. You can follow his evolving career and charitable work on Instagram [HERE], Facebook [HERE], and TikTok [HERE].