‘The Walking Dead,’ ‘Teen Wolf’ actor brings show to Tifton living rooms
TIFTON — “The Walking Dead” and “Teen Wolf” actor Adam Fristoe is ready to take the stage this weekend. That stage just happens to be a living room.
Fristoe, a 1994 Tift County High graduate who has gone on to act in theater, film and television, is bringing the hour-long, one-man play “Dogs of Rwanda” to Tifton.
“It’s a really beautiful story about a man who followed his high school crush on a mission trip to Africa who ends up in the middle of the genocide,” said Fristoe.
After witnessing the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Fristoe’s character writes a book about his experience.
The play catches up with him years later when he receives a copy of his book in the mail, with a note attached saying there are untruths in the book.
“Dogs of Rwanda” will be performed Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets are available at www.outofhandtheater.com and ticket buyers will be given directions to the house hosting the performance.
The living room setting is an idea Fristoe and his theatre company, Out of Hand Theater Company, had four years ago.
“It worked as a good business model, but it also worked as an intimate theatre experience,” said Fristoe, who serves as co-artistic director for the company. “In the history of performance in the 1800s, there were tons of shows that happens in salons and intimate venues.”
Written by Sean Christopher Lewis, the play is part of National New Play Network, an organization that “champions the development, production, and continued life of new plays,” according to its website.
Out of Hand puts on 30 performances of a living room show each year.
Usually, Fristoe isn’t the performer, but “Dogs of Rwanda” connected with him.
“The thing that draws me to it is that it’s about the struggle to put oneself back together,” said Fristoe. “Which I think is a real common, human experience. It certainly has been mine.”
Out of Hand doesn’t limit itself to living rooms. The company has put on shows in fields, in warehouses, in found spaces and occasionally, Fristoe notes, “in a theater.”
Fristoe got into acting as a kid in Tifton doing community plays, something he continued at Tift County High.
“I was making bad choices and struggling as a teenager,” said Fristoe. “I did a couple of shows and felt like I really found something to focus on. It felt like the right place for me to be.”
As well as playing Dean on the newest season of “The Walking Dead,” Fristoe’s been playing Dr. Norden on the show “If Loving You Is Wrong.”
Prior to that, he played Adrian Harris on three seasons of MTV’s “Teen Wolf.”
He plays television news anchor Bob Walker in “LBJ,” Rob Reiner’s biopic of President Lyndon Baines Johnson.
He declined to comment on future roles, citing non-disclosure agreements, though his IMDB page lists a role in the remake of “Jacob’s Ladder” and the thriller “Sick People.”