THE CURFEW

Maja Wampuszyc is an American actress of stage and screen living in New York City. She was born and raised in metropolitan Detroit into a family of Polish immigrant refugees.

Wampuszyc’s film credits include James Gray's film The Immigrant (Cannes Premiere & New York Film Festival) playing Aunt Edyta opposite Marion Cotillard, with Joaquin Pheonix and Jeremy Renner and produced by Oscar Winners Anthony Katagus (Twelve Years a Slave) and Greg Shapiro (Hurt Locker). Also: Mike Newell's Mona Lisa Smile and Henry Jaglom's Going Shopping. On television, Wampuszyc played Mrs. Zygmund in Oscar Winner Steven Soderbergh's Cinemax television series The Knick, Magda Nagy on Madam Secretary and Nadia on the Search Party opposite Susan Sarandon.

Wampuszyc made her Broadway debut as Ida Haller in 2009 in Irena's Vow at the Walter Kerr Theater. Her Off-Broadway credits include Geraldine Connelly in Paul Green's The House of Connelly at the ReGroup Theatre, the first person to play that role since Stella Adler in 1931; originating Ida Haller in Irena's Vow (first play ever presented live to the United Nations); Marina Petrova in James Armstrong's Foggy Bottom at The Abingdon Theater Company; and has worked at The Pearl Theatre Company. She played a radio host in Zhu Yi's I am the Moon (partially based on the story of the Japanese pornographic star Ai Iijima), as part of the 2013 17th annual New York International Fringe Festival. Other New York City theater credits include: a Father (revolving role) in The Obie Award-winning play An Oak Tree by and with Tim Crouch at the Barrow Street Theatre (other fathers included F. Murray Abraham, Joan Allen, and Frances McDormand) and Rewriting Her Life, by Barbara Masry, directed by Tony Award winner Trazana Beverley. She has had runs at HB Playwrights Foundation, MCC, Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Museum, Theater for the New City, NYDIA and the Looking Glass Theater. She has also performed regionally, including Precious Stones a two hander play for The Silk Road Theater of Chicago playing the roles of a Palestinian activist, a Chicago lesbian and a 70-year-old Israeli Zionist. In the fall of 2014, she co-starred in the five-person ensemble revival of Mark Ravenhill's Pool (no water) Off-Broadway, once again at the Barrow Street Theater, and at ART.

Summer of 2016 Wampuzyc originated the role of Corrine in Richard Vetere's Lady Macbeth and Her Lover in the Iron Spike Theatre inaugural production for the FringeNYC festival. The theater critic Everett Goldner writing for nytheater now said of her performance: “The raw intensity that Maja Wampuszyc, playing Corrine, achieves in these moments (she has several) reminds me of some fabulous, skeletal, withered old weeping willow tree, its boughs gone, its charms almost empty, its branches dropping to the ground in naked shame”. In 2017 she reprised her role as Corrine at The Directors Studio for The Directors Company, NYC about which Daryl Reilly writes in Theater Scene: “With her marvelously fluty voice, imperious bearing, expressive physicality and animated facial features, Maja Wampuszyc as the haughty Corrine recalls Geraldine Page in all her grand glory. Ms. Wampuszyc is mesmerizing, delivering a searing performance of tremendous depth. She vividly conveys the character’s dysfunctional sensibility with heightened emotionalism and dry humor”.

Wampuszyc continues to enjoy a frequent collaboration with writer and poet Richard Vetere (Third Miracle d/Agnieszka Holland). As a director in The Actors Studio Playwright Directors Workshop, she has worked on several new Vetere plays: Zagłada (as actress and director & recently published), Aleppo, The Atheist in All of Us and now No Sense of Decency. This year in the PDW, she is also working with Lanie Robertson (Broadway’s Lady Day at the Emerson Bar & Grill) on a new play.

Most recently on stage Wampuszyc played Anna Akhmatova in Night Shadows, or: One Hundred Million Voices Shouting, by Lynda Crawford directed by Scott Klaven at Irondale which closed early due to the Corona Virus pandemic. During this pandemic time, she played Ayn Rand in the streaming series The Female Genius by Rachel Carey and directed by Cameron Bossert for Thirdwing, LTD listed by the New York Times as one of the first and best pandemic theater streaming opportunities in March 2020. She acted in and directed The Curfew, an eight minute
monologue film and originated in English the title role in the new play Clytemnestra in Hades for the Directors Guild Footlight series (on zoom) both written by Richard Vetere; acted in and created her first short solo film and played multiple characters in a new podcast of the Emperor’s New Clothes directed by Yelena Demikovsky.

Wampuszyc trained with Uta Hagen, Austin Pendleton, and her mentor Robert X. Modica; concentration in Shakespeare at the British American of Dramatic Academy; interned with the Wooster Group; has an extensive background in ballet, movement and yoga. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BA in English Literature from Wayne State University and is
bilingual in Polish and English. She is also credited as M. Grace Sutton. Maja Wampuszyc is a member of Actors Equity, the Screen Actors Guild/AFTRA and is represented by Bret Adams,
LTD.