Twenty years of
learning how to
listen on camera
- 22Screen credits
- 31Stage roles
- 9Rep seasons
I was cast in my first role because I was the only reader in the room who stopped talking long enough to hear the other actor finish. That is still the whole job. Everything else — the dialect, the stillness, the eight weeks of table work — exists to protect the moment when a scene partner says something and it genuinely lands.
Trained at the Elmsworth Conservatory in classical text and Meisner repetition, I spent nine seasons in regional repertory before the camera work found me. Theatre taught me structure: how a scene breathes across two hours, how to keep a performance alive on the forty-first night. Film taught me economy — that a held breath in a close-up can carry what a soliloquy carries from a thrust stage.
I work best on projects where the writing is doing something difficult. Quiet fathers, unreliable witnesses, men who are wrong but not villains. If your script has a character who says one thing while meaning four, I would like to read for it.
- UnionSAG-AFTRA · Equity
- BasedChicago, with London right to work
- Height / Playing age6′0″ · 34–46
- DialectsRP, Estuary, Chicago, Deep South, Dublin
“Vance does almost nothing for ninety minutes and breaks your heart twice.”
What I bring into the room
Six disciplines, all of them still in active practice rather than listed from memory.
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Screen acting
Comfortable on long lenses and long takes. Marks hit without the performance knowing it.
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Classical text
Verse, heightened language and Restoration comedy — scansion that serves sense, not metre.
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Voice & audiobook
Home booth to broadcast spec, same-day turnaround, 40+ hours of long-form narration.
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Motion capture
Volume-trained, HMC-comfortable, used to building a character with no set and no costume.
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Dialect work
Five accents at audition standard, plus a coach on call for anything outside the list.
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Movement & combat
BASSC-certified unarmed and single sword. Rides, swims, and takes direction on both.
Training
- Elmsworth Conservatory
- Three-year acting diploma — classical text, Meisner, Laban
- Rowan Court Studio
- Two-season company member, Chekhov and Ibsen intensives
- Ongoing
- Weekly scene study with Ana Ferreira; dialect coaching with J. Okonkwo
Representation
- Theatrical & film
- Halloran & Finch Talent — Chicago
- Voice
- Signal Voices — London
- Press enquiries
- Direct to the contact form below
“Send the whole script, not just the sides. I read better when I know how it ends.”
— EliasAwards &
festival
recognition
- 2026 Best Lead Performance — Salt in the Wound Northwood International Film Festival Winner
- 2025 Outstanding Actor in a Play — The Quiet Inheritance Midwest Stage Awards Winner
- 2025 Best Actor — The Longer Winter Cordova Film Week Nominated
- 2024 Ensemble Prize — Glasshouse Tidewater Independent Awards Winner
- 2022 Breakthrough Performance — Mercy Street Bridge Lightbox New Voices Nominated
What the critics filed
Selected notices from stage and screen releases, 2022 onward.