‘an actor who teaches – a teacher who acts’
William Metzo is from Pennsylvania. He went to high school in Philadelphia, college in Wilkes-Barre and at the age of 21 was in New York City studying with Stella Adler. One of his first jobs was working as Mordecai Gorelik’s assistant and acting a featured role in the Actors’ Studio Project, “The Firebugs” starring Zero Mostel.
Marc Connelly cast him in his last play “The Portable Yenberry” with Mildred Dunnock, then hired him as assistant director.
With more than a dozen seasons of Summer Stock (a new play each week for 10 weeks), and in most repertory companies east of the Mississippi, his work has been remarkably protean: from ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ with Diane Keaton to ‘The Bat’ with Zasu Pitts.
Mr. Metzo has done 18 of Shakespeare’s plays, many more than once, e.g. 5 productions of ‘The Tempest’, 4 as Prospero; ‘Hamlet’, 4 different productions and roles; 3 times as ‘Julius Caesar’; 3 as ‘MacBeth’. As ‘King Lear’, he led the Utah Shakespearian Festival in their Tony Award winning season.
He has also acted on television – in all the New York-based daytime dramas, – in movies, in 4 National tours and in 3 Broadway shows.
In 1981, during the National Tour of ‘Annie’, a chorus member asked Mr. Metzo for help. She was not involved, her attention wandered. With his aid she went on to take over a leading role.
Since then he has been working AND teaching: in college as an associate professor and as a visiting lecturer, in his weekly classes, and privately.
Mr. Metzo’s private life mirrors his work. He did the four National Tours mentioned above on his Honda GoldWing motorcycle; did a free-fall jump from a plane at 12,000 feet; herded cattle at a ranch near Durango; rafted 230 miles of the Colorado River through Grand Canyon; walked 140 miles across the Tsavo National Parks in Kenya; watched lava flow into the Pacific from Kilawea; saw and heard a hump-back whale at 65 feet while scubaing off Kauai; and sea-kayaked the Galapagos. He, also, trekked the tundra in Alaska’s Denali National Park, watched glaciers calf in Kenai, and waded with salmon-fishing brown bears at Brooks Falls in the Katmai National Park. He visited one of his students who won a Fulbright to teach at New Zealand’s National Theatre School TOI WHAKAARI and they spent weeks exploring the South Island. With his son, he rode on horseback the backcountry of Banff National Park, and, most recently, introduced a grandson to whitewater rafting on the Green River through Desolation Canyon, Utah.