Robert A. K. Gonyo is a theatre director, actor, voiceover artist, podcaster, musician, and tour-guide residing in Jackson Heights, Queens, NY.
Born and raised in upstate New York, Robert attended Siena College, where he studied Political Science and Creative Arts with a focus in theatre & music. After several years working in campaign politics, he moved to New York to earn a Master’s in Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Upon the completion of his formal studies, he co-founded Co-Op Theatre East (COTE), an independent theatre company that was active from 2008–2022, with the mission to create new, innovative, socially-minded works of theatre.
While versed and practiced in all areas of stagecraft, Robert’s focus in the theatre remains on directing. His credits include Carthaginians, Dinner With Friends, Richard II, The Trial of Donna Caine, The Shape of Things, Picnic, The Memory of Water, and The Gut Girls for the Stella Adler Studio of Acting; Million Dollar Quartet and Escape to Margaritaville for Riverside Center for the Performing Arts in Fredericksburg, VA; the ensemble-created Season to Taste and David Myers’s Muzungu, both with COTE; live performances of Samuel Beckett’s radio play Cascando and Vinko Globokar’s Un jour comme un autre, both featuring music ensemble thingNY; and, the ensemble-derived Mission with Mixed Phoenix Theatre Group.
An aficionado of radio plays, Robert is the producer & sound designer of Living Radio, a monthly series of new radio plays written from the news of the day. Since 2023, Living Radio has been a monthly show at FRIGID New York’s UNDER St. Mark’s Theater in the East Village.
In addition to directing, Robert is a prolific sound designer for the theatre. His sound work has been heard in productions at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, the Lee Strasburg Theatre & Film Institute, and with companies including Retro Productions, The Skeleton Rep, Kevin Ray Works, The New Collectives, & Writopia Lab’s Worldwide Plays Festival.
He is also the host (in the guise of “Professor Mortimer,” his tour-guide alter-ego with Haunted Manhattan) and producer of Apparitions, a podcast of new radio horror. He also wrote & directed the radio plays Conference, which puts the audience on a campaign strategy conference call, Poll, which was performed live onstage as part of Theater in Asylum’s The Debates series, and A New Cassette, featured on the Geste podcast.
He is also the creator of several works with COTE, such as his one-act Urinal Play, an allegory set in a corporate men’s room with an omniscient, disappearing boss and an overflowing toilet; O Brave New World, a site-specific, improvisation-based performance about technology and theatre set in the midst of a real house-party; and numerous murder-mystery dinner-theatre performances, created as charity fundraisers.
As a performer, Robert has acted roles in classics and brand new plays, from drama to musicals to performance art. Favorite roles include Demetrius in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Chairman in Rupert Holmes’s Drood, Rev. Kimball and others in the Drama-Desk-nominated The Threepenny Opera with Marvell Repertory Theatre, John Ivan in Myrton Running Wolf’s Carlisle: A Different Three Sisters, and sharing the stage with best friend & the greatest Buddy Holly portrayer in the world, Todd Meredith, on trumpet and mandolin in Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story.
His voiceover work can be heard on several audiobooks, the Tracing Xenakis and ICEcast podcasts from the International Contemporary Ensemble, which he also produced, as well as his own off-off-Broadway podcast, Go See a Show! Also a guitarist, trumpeter, vocalist, songwriter, and amateur mandolin player, Robert performs music with Todd Meredith as the duo Acoustic Pic Slide, as well as with other friends around New York.
As a tour guide, he can be found primarily in Greenwich Village, leading ghost tours around Washington Square Park as the aforementioned “Professor Mortimer” or downtown in The Five Points area as “W. M. Blackwood” with Haunted Manhattan, as well as leading pub crawls with Literary Pub Crawl.
Robert also co-hosts a weekly podcast talking comics (along with many, many tangents) with his uncle, Tim Gonyo—you can listen to The Lonely End of the Rack on your podcatcher of choice.
Interviews
Given my work in & affinity for podcasts, I’ve had the opportunity to chat about my work a few times on various podcasts—take a listen.
BroadwayRadio, July 14, 2015—Host James Marino and I discuss the origins of Go See a Show!, the theatre ecosystem, podcasting, and more.
Nerd Roots, February 27, 2015—Hosts Kia Sayyadi & Ben Fullon and I discuss my nerd roots—love of Lovecraft, the Batman, podcasts, music, theatre, gaming, and whatnot.