Susan Blackwell is an American actress, writer and singer, best known for playing characters based on herself in the original musicals Title of show| and Now. Here. This. She has appeared in other plays, musicals, films, and television shows including Master of None, Madame Secretary, The Blacklist, Succession, Law & Order, P.S. I Love You, After the Wedding, Yes, God, Yes, and Speech and Debate. She created and hosts her own talk showSide by Side by Susan Blackwell on Broadway.com.
, which played on Broadway in the 2008 Season after a successful extended Off-Broadway run at the Vineyard Theatre in 2006. The musical documents its own creation by two Broadway fans, who want to enter the New York Musical Theatre Festival and struggle to complete the show in three and a half weeks, and their two actress friends. The actors are also the writers and characters of the musical. Blackwell's character, "Susan," is a quirky performer by night and corporate drone by day—what Blackwell calls a "distillation" of her true personality. Blackwell became involved in the musical's development early on, through her longstanding friendships with the show's writer, Hunter Bell, and composer, Jeff Bowen. Blackwell had worked with the two men as part of her previous Off-Off-Broadway performing duo, the New Wondertwins. At the time Bowen and Bell began work on ', Blackwell had decided to abandon performing for a stable, corporate office job. "I feel really grateful to my friends for rescuing me," she has said of her role in '. "They airlifted me out of very corporate ascension and plopped me down into this whole other experience."
Other work
Blackwell began her professional acting career with a two-year stint in the company of Minnesota's Guthrie Theatre before moving to New York in 1995. Blackwell subsequently developed a reputation as a quirky downtown theatre artist. Blackwell performed Off-Off-Broadway with Rebecca Finnegan as The New Wondertwins, a variety act whose assortment of songs, sketches and daredevil feats included ventriloquism and making deviled eggs in their mouths. One Village Voice reviewer wrote of the duo in 1999: "Their wordless finale, orchestrated to a space-age bachelor-pad soundtrack, is a tour de force of fascination and horror: never have soy milk and deviled eggs been used to such loathsome effect." In addition to s Off-Broadway and Broadway runs, Blackwell's more recent credits include the Off-Broadway shows Speech and Debate, Anon, Working Title, Vilna's Got a Golem and The Heidi Chronicles. Blackwell's television appearances include The Sopranos, Third Watch, All My Children, The Good Wife, Person of Interest and several episodes of Law & Order and '. Her film credits include P.S. I Love You, Margin Call, Margot at the Wedding, Changing Lanes, the short Bun-Bun and Night Int. Trailer for the feature filmTen Minutes Older. Blackwell joined ' castmates Hunter Bell, Jeff Bowen and Heidi Blickenstaff in 2012 for the off-Broadway musical Now. Here. This. for which she also co-wrote the book with Hunter Bell. In 2018, Blackwell was seen in the Encores! Off-Center production of The Civilians' Gone Missing. In 2019, Blackwell performed in a one-night-only Broadway concert performance of ' to benefit The Actor's Fund. She appeared alongside the entire original cast, and the evening was directed and choreographed by Michael Berresse. Starting in September of 2019 Blackwell began co-hosting a podcast, with fellow actress Laura Camien, called The Spark File''
