He majored in theatre as an undergraduate at Indiana State University, where he acted, directed and studied playwriting with Don Nigro. 

 

At ISU, he co-wrote an evening of connected short plays called Delusions, a reaction to being denied permission to dramatize Richard Bach’s Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah.   

 

He wrote the book and lyrics to a musical about the weight loss craze, called EAT, with music by Steve Ballantine.

 

After college, Randy began a 30-year working relationship as actor and playwright with Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre (SART) in Mars Hill, North Carolina.   He performed in dozens of new plays and American classics, and SART commissioned and produced his play with music, The Memory Collection (The Legend of Basom Lamar Lunsford), which received the Access to Artistic Excellence NEA Grant for Musical Theatre.   

 

After an acting workshop with Marshall W. Mason, artistic director of Circle Repertory Company, Randy was invited to do an internship at Circle Repertory Company and became a New Yorker.  

 

He has worked as an actor with Mr. Mason on productions of Caligula, Talley & Son, Enrico IV, Lanford Wilson’s Rain Dance, and at Actor’s Theatre of Phoenix as Martin in The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia?, for which he was nominated for the Best Actor AriZoni Award.  

 

Jon Jory, artistic director at Actors Theatre of Louisville (ATL), commissioned and produced Randy’s one act plays Boaz and Unbeatable Harold, which was later made into a feature film, starring Dylan McDermott, Charles Durning, Henry Winkler, Phyllis Diller and Gladys Knight. See the trailer here.

 

At Circle Repertory Company, besides the groundbreaking work being done on the main stage, there was a hotbed of new work being produced by a young company of actors, writers and directors such as Joe Mantello, William Fichner, Michael Mastro, Peter Hedges, Mark Ramont, Cyndi Coyne, all masterminded by Michael Warren Powell, in the Circle Rep Lab (the Lab).

 

Noojin’s play A Better Home A-Waitin' was produced in the Lab by three directors (Peg Denithorn, Sal Trapani, and Tina Ball) with three casts, including Tonya Pinkins and Shawn Colvin, with three different titles. 

 

After his internship, Randy joined the Lab company as actor and playwright and worked there regularly for the next ten years.  He primarily studied with resident playwright Lanford Wilson and playwright/screenwriter/director, John Bishop.

 

The Lab produced Noojin’s plays Downtown Train, Boaz, Unbeatable Harold, One Man’s Meat (written with Ed "Porkchop" Meyer), Unstripped and The Death of the Blues.

 

Ensemble Studio Theatre produced his one act play You Can’t Trust the Male in their Marathon of One-Act Plays. The play is published by Dramatic Publishing Company and was included in The Best American Short Plays 1991-1992;

and exerpts are also published in The Great Monologues from the EST Marathon.

 

Noojin holds an MFA in Performance from Arizona State University and an MFA in Playwriting from The University of Iowa’s Playwrights Workshop, where he wrote The Knife Trick, Just Say Something and The Complaint, which won the Maibaum Playwriting Award for plays dealing with issues of social justice, produced by Bloomington Playwrights Project and Cockeyed Optimists at The 45th Street Theatre.  Read the review here.

 

In New York, Randy has acted in hundreds of plays at Circle Repertory Company, La Mama E.T.C., Circle in the Square Downtown, Circle Rep Lab, The Kraine Theatre, The 45th Street Theatre, The Flamboyan, Hudson Theatre Works, Alice’s 4th Floor, West Bank Theatre Downstairs and The Drilling Company. 

 

He played Hank Williams in three productions of Hank Williams: Lost Highway, at Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre, Mill Mountain Playhouse in VA, and at New Stage in MS. 

 

On television, Noojin has been featured on Boardwalk Empire and Royal Pains.  Independent films include The Bench, Die Barkley, see the full film here, and Evil Things, see clip here. 

 

Noojin wrote and directed a four minute 16 MM film, The Last Bus, film score by Marshall Harvey, see it here.

 

His solo play with music, Hard Travelin’ With Woody had its world premiere in The New York International Fringe Festival and has since toured the U.S and Canada.  

 

See Huffington Post review here.

The Backstage review.

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