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Project: Making a Marquee
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THE DREAM
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Project: Making a Marquee
HOME
THE DREAM
WHY
VOTE
JOURNEY
ABOUT
COACHING
HIRE ME
CONTACT
HOME
THE DREAM
WHY
VOTE
JOURNEY
ABOUT
COACHING
HIRE ME
CONTACT

What should the outside look like?

A C T I I I · T H E O U T S I D E

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Building in public, one entry at a time.

A C T I V · T H E J O U R N E Y S O F A R

The Building Fund opened with my first professional directing fee. It sits in a high yield account, and every coaching session and contract adds to it.

The first deposit

Six floors, five stages, one 55 foot rotunda: drawn, costed, and designed for five possible home cities.

The plans

T H E S H O W S

35MM: A Musical Exhibition · Director & Choreographer · Abbey Theater of Dublin · 2026

The concept: a pop up gallery opening. The evening began before the theater doors did. The lobby was staged as a gallery of the Matthew Murphy photographs that inspired the score, so the audience walked among the images before hearing a note. Inside, those same photographs hung projected above the stage while the cast sang beneath them, and a vintage 35 MM camera on its tripod stood center as the production's focal point: every one of these stories begins with a stopped moment and the single press of a button.

Read the full 35 page directing prompt book for the complete concept, scene by scene.

35MM production photo 1
Director Nicolas Brunet sets up the 35 MM camera and tripod that anchored the entire production: a constant reminder that every story onstage began as a stopped moment and the single press of a button
35MM production photo 2
Kate Merrymen, Olivia Noel, Nic Franklin, Niko Carter, and Eric Shonk (left to right) tumble into the frenzy of Crazytown.
35MM production photo 3
The full company of Crazytown, mid mayhem: Kate Merrymen, Olivia Noel, Nic Franklin, Niko Carter, and Eric Shonk.
35MM production photo 3
Nic Franklin and Kate Merrymen in Transition 1, as Caralee's lights flicker awake and quietly promise the chaos still to come.
35MM production photo 3
Eric Shonk and Kate Merrymen recreate the photograph at the heart of On Monday. Neither sings a note: Olivia Noel, not pictured, is the only voice in the number, and the pair are onstage purely to bring the image she cannot stop singing about to life.
35MM production photo 3
Niko Carter and Olivia Noel downstage, Kate Merrymen behind, in The Party Goes With You. Carter and Noel were added to the number so the audience could watch Merrymen relive her wedding night in real time, an open wound dancing right in front of her.
35MM production photo 3
Eric Shonk holds the room in Good Lady.
35MM production photo 3
Nic Franklin, Eric Shonk, and Niko Carter (left to right). Franklin and Carter were added as the fellas Shonk takes to fight: an easy, dumb and dumber pair whose goofiness makes Shonk's absurd intensity, and his obsession with his lost lady in white, land twice as hard.
35MM production photo 3
Kate Merrymen and Eric Shonk in Make Me Happy, two toxic partners who have realized they are exactly what the other needs. Here, a rare beat of earnestness: both of them looking up in something like prayer.
35MM production photo 3
Niko Carter alone in a single spot for The Seraph, sitting with his religious trauma and everything that carried him to this moment.
35MM production photo 3
Niko Carter, Nic Franklin, and Eric Shonk in Immaculate Deception, playing artists who make art out of pain. By the end of the number, all five singers stand downstage in a dead stare, pointing the song's hypocrisy straight back at the house.
35MM production photo 3
Niko Carter, Nic Franklin, and Eric Shonk in Why Must We Tell Them Why, a number that insists artists owe no one a definition or a justification of their work.
35MM production photo 3
Olivia Noel, Niko Carter, Nic Franklin, Eric Shonk, and Kate Merrymen storm downstage as the house lights rise at the peak of Why Must We Tell Them Why: a true Brechtian move, turning the song's message directly on the audience.
35MM production photo 3
Olivia Noel and Niko Carter in Twisted Teeth, which this production reimagined: in place of vampires, the number became a portrait of drug addiction.
35MM production photo 3
Nic Franklin stands apart from the company in Transition 4, where light and staging conjure a car crash and quietly foreshadow the number that follows.
35MM production photo 3
Niko Carter in the world of the living; Nic Franklin at the microphone, the passive observer who blames himself; and Olivia Noel, the partner lost in a car crash on their honeymoon.
35MM production photo 3
Olivia Noel, lit like a warning, in The Ballad of Sara Berry: a rock murder ballad staged with inspiration drawn from Carrie and from pop artists like Billie Eilish and Chappell Roan.

All production photos by Tristen Doan

What I learned: I knew I had made the right choices when audience members came up after the show to say they assumed my additions were written into the piece. The best directing fits so well that it sometimes goes unnoticed.

The reception: Richard Sanford of Columbus Underground called it “a massive jolt of nostalgia and a remarkably assured directorial debut” (read the preview). Audiences loved the gallery to stage journey and the multi sensory pairing of live song and projected image; the Abbey used the production to showcase homegrown talent raised in the Dublin theater system; and the show's anti song cycle structure of distinct photographic vignettes, swinging from dark comedy to raw vulnerability, landed exactly as hoped.

The cast: Nic Franklin, Niko Carter, Eric Shonk, Olivia Noel, and Kate Merrymen.

ACT V · A B O U T T H E F O U N D E R

The person behind the plans.

Education: Senior at Webster University's Sargent Conservatory of Theatre Arts, earning a BFA in Musical Theatre, with plans to pursue a master's degree. Also currently taking finance and business management classes, because someone has to read the theater's spreadsheets.

Offstage, I am the friend who hears one fact about the French Revolution and loses the entire evening to it. I read constantly, mostly history, and I balance all that scholarship with horror movies I will happily argue about at length: Shutter Island, Obsession, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hereditary, in that order, and yes, the order is correct. I host board game nights that begin as friendly gatherings and end in negotiations worthy of a peace summit. I lift at the gym so I can carry both the groceries and the emotional weight of Hereditary. I can quote John Mulaney the way some people quote scripture. I run on a frankly irresponsible amount of coffee. And more than anything, I collect people: I am a shameless socializer, so if we have not met yet, give it a minute.

Founding Artistic Director, a theater in formation

R É S U M É S

PERFORMING RÉSUMÉ
PRODUCTION RÉSUMÉ:

A C T V I · C O A C HIN G A N D S E L F T A P E S

$45 an hour. Worth every cent of it.

Based in Columbus and St. Louis. In person can be a bit tricky when I'm working in Columbus, but reach out and we will find something that works. I also coach over Zoom, and I assure you, online sessions help just as much. Too expensive? Let’s talk, I’m sure we can work something out!

Consultation Meeting

30 minutes. Free. We talk goals, and you decide.

Free

Audition Coaching

Monologue and song prep. 30 minutes or 1 hour.

Understanding Shakespeare and Others

Heightened text, made playable. 30 minutes or 1 hour.

Music Theory and Sight Reading

30 minutes or 1 hour.

College Audition Prep

Rep selection through final tapes. Can also run as an info session: which schools to look at, what to expect in the room, and how to stand out. 30 minutes or 1 hour.

Acting Lessons

30 minutes or 1 hour.

Self Tape

30 minutes or 1 hour. Add $25 if I provide and set up equipment, $75 if I edit, or $80 for both.

Student rates are always available; just ask.

This is the seed of the theater's future training studios and camps. Classes there will never be free, but they will always be cheap and genuinely affordable, because the goal was never revenue. The building will have other ways to earn. The goal is to give kids a phenomenal education they can carry with them, on the stage and off it. Every session booked today funds the account that builds those studios.

Questions before booking? Call or text 973 369 2696, or email nbrunettheater@gmail.com.

Book a session

A C T V I I · H I R E M E

Every fee buys a brick

Every dollar I earn in these roles goes straight into the Building Fund.

Fight Direction

Safe, story first staged combat.

Intimacy Coordination

Consent forward staging for intimate content.

Directing

Plays and musicals, concept through opening.

Assistant Directing

Always eager to be in the room.

Will work for little or no payment: I'm here for the learning

Technical Positions

Lighting, sound, stage ops, stage management. Comfortable anywhere backstage.

Will work for little or no payment: I'm here for the learning

Dramaturgy

Research, context, and text work. A true labor of love, and one I am deeply dedicated to.

Acting and Performing

Available for casts and readings. Résumés above.
Check availability

I am an actor and work backstage. That is what I have always done and that is what I will continue to do

C U R T A I N C A L L · C O N N E C T

Say hello.

Project Email Making.A.Marquee@gmail.com
Booking & Personal nbrunettheater@gmail.com
Phone 973 369 2696
Instagram @making_a_marquee
TikTok @making.a.marquee
Facebook Making A Marquee
Threads @making_a_marquee

O N E M O R E C H A N C E

Thank you!

Be able to say you were here first.

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Your story, center stage.  ·  © 2026 Nicolas Brunet. Plans are concept drawings, not construction documents.