We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matt Dengler. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matt below.

Matt, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

I’ve heard that some people believe we choose our parents before we are born as some sort of karmic thing. I mean, I have no idea if that is true. But if it is, then I must have known I was supposed to be an artist in this lifetime, based on the parents I chose.

I was always a creative kid. I remember losing myself in a stack of multi-colored construction paper, scented markers, and safety scissors. I would just go for hours creating who-knows-what: figures, greeting cards, ornaments for the Christmas tree, mini-models of the scenery I saw in musicals. I swear you could see confetti flying out of my room like Edward Scissorhands. When I’d snap out of it, I would look up and be on an island of scraps, like the tide had come in while I was working. This is the kind of kid I was. And really, it’s the kind of creative I am today.

For Christmas one year my parents asked me what I wanted, and I asked for a stage in our basement. My sisters and I were always putting on productions with the neighborhood kids and I thought it was time we had a proper playhouse. When I came downstairs that Chrismtas, Santa had brought plywood and 2x4s, and black fabric for leg curtains, and track lighting for stage lights. I was in heaven. My Dad said he would help me create a theatre in the basement playroom. And that’s exactly what we did. “Matt-inee Theatre” we called it. Har-Har.

For the next few years I would lose myself turning refrigerator boxes into carriages and Christmas lights into fireflies. I even got a fog-machine from Spencer’s Gifts for my birthday that year which really took things up a notch! “Matt-inee Theatre” became my creative sanctuary.

My parents would encourage me to audition for community theatre and local professional productions. I was “bit by The Bug” as they say and there was no turning back. Performing was in my blood.

I continued to play in my theatre until the brutal years of middle school when I began to think those poisonous and pervasive thoughts, “what will other people think of me?” I decided to host a New Years Eve party that year and I was inviting my friends over, including my girlfriend! I should mention, I am now an out and proud gay man so this reads a little funny in retrospect, but this was the early 2000s! I couldn’t have my girlfriend see my theater. What would she think?! So I converted it into a karaoke stage. That was decidedly more respectable. We could sing Britney Spears and 98 Degrees until the ball dropped. So I tore down the pained bedsheet backdrops and hid the toybox full of puppets and I made that place as straight and sensible as I could.

I continued to perform in school musicals throughout high school, but my Junior year when asked to fill out a form saying what I wanted to be when I grew up I said “an architect.” To me that was a sensible “real person” job. And at least arts-adjacent. That was until I was cornered in the hallway one day by my music teacher.“An architect?” she said. She told me I was nuts not to major in music or musical theatre. I knew she was right. Deep down the theatre was my passion, but it didn’t feel realistic. I told her I would look into it.

My parents could not have been more supportive. They knew I was still that little boy with the fog-machine. And when I auditioned and got into NYU early and on a large scholarship it was clear what I should do.

I am so grateful to have parents and parental figures in my life who championed my creativity and gently nudged me towards passion and away from self-sabotage. It was because of them that I was able to become the architect of my childhood dreams.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Matt Dengler. I am an actor who has appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in Regional Theaters across America. I made my Broadway debut in the revival of Stephen Sondehim’s A Little Night Music starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury and later Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch. I also appeared on Broadway in The Visit starring Chita Rivera and Roger Rees. My Off-Broadway credits include Princeton/Rod in Avenue Q, Harold in Harold & Maude, and the longest running musical ever The Fantasticks as well as many New York workshops and readings.

I’ve had the great pleasure of appearing in straight plays like the U.S. premier of David Greig’s The Monster in The Hall at City Theatre in Pittsburgh, PA, the campy Drop Dead Perfect at Penguin Rep with the Ridiculous Theatrical Company founder Everett Quinton, and most recently Chicken & Biscuits with the late, legendary Lynda Gravatt at Crossroads Theatre Company.

I have appeared in regional theaters across the country such as in Next to Normal at Pioneer Theater in Salt Lake City, UT, Little Women in Palo Alto, CA, Sheryl Crow and Barry Levinson’s Diner the Musical in Wilmington Delaware, A Little Night Music at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, and recently in Beautiful: the Carole King Musical at Asolo Rep in Sarasota Florida, and Waitress the musical in Northport Long Island.

I am also a stained glass artist. I have a small business making handmade stained glass items like lamps, votives, nightlights, and windows which I sell on my Etsy page and to clients via my instagram. This was something I started during the pandemic when I was living with my parents in Upstate New York, but more on that later.

Have you ever had to pivot?

A time I pivoted was really a time when we all pivoted. The Great Pivot of late. Covid 19. I was directing Little Women the musical at a college in Virginia when we all got the news that the world was coming to a screeching halt. I decided New York City wasn’t the best place to ride out a mysterious airborne pandemic so I moved back in with my parents outside Syracuse. This is not how I pictured my early-30’s, but hey, I was lucky to have a safe place to go.

As the weeks turned to months. I began to wrack my brain for other things to do. Maybe I would go back to school to become a therapist? My therapist told me I would make a good therapist. Maybe that’s just something therapists say?

Live theater was dead in the water. My already tenuous career was possibly the most dangerous activity one could do according to the FDA. Gathering in a room to laugh or cry could be lethal. So it wasn’t looking good for things to return to normal for my theater career any time soon. This was all very depressing.

But my father, who has always been a bit of a Renaissance Man, had gotten into stained glass as a hobby in recent years. He had set up a little studio in the basement of their house. Knowing I was feeling listless, he encouraged me to go down there and get creative.

He had shown me the basics a few years prior, but I really didn’t feel compelled to get into it then. But now, with all this creative energy and nowhere to put it, that little creative kid who used to lose himself creating things got busy again. In his parents’ basement no less!

I began to make stained glass suncatchers to hang in windows. Friends and family would order them off Instagram. It was a great way to stay connected and spread some chear during dark times. I branched out into nightlights and lamps, votives, vases, and art pieces. I named my little studio Thrown Stone Studio and started an Etsy page. I liked the way that sounded plus it was evocative of a David and Goliath long-shot, the ripples of a stone thrown into water, the rebellion of “those in glass houses…” Basically, I was taking a chance. Why not start a business?!

As live theater has continued to come back and my career has picked up post-covid my “pivot” has become a welcome second outlet for my creativity and another form of creative income. I set up my own small stained glass studio in my New York City apartment where I create things and post them for sale on my Etsy page. I’ve even been “Star Seller” several months in a row! I’ve also made several custom commissions for people with special requests.

I think for creatives like me it is important to cast a wide net. That way I can lean on another area of my creativity when one area is being less fruitful. I’ve also found that each area somehow informs the other. You wouldn’t think that visual arts are connected to performing arts, but they are. It’s all about process and Big Picture/little picture. Sonheim puts it best in Sunday in the Park with George. I won’t even bother trying to explain. Just listen to “Putting it Together.”

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I feel like my whole theatre career has been a story of resilience. And I think most actors will say the same thing. I’m proud of the resume I’ve built, the incredible experiences I’ve had, the people I’ve been fortunate enough to work with, and things I’ve learned along the way. But the old cliche is true that this is a tough business.

Each project creates a family where we build trust and connection, but when that show ends, as they always do, that family scatters to the wind to find their next jobs. We keep in touch of course but it isn’t the same. And the constant hustle can be a real stresser. I recently had dinner with a friend who has several decades more experience than I and who has been in countless Broadway shows and he said, “that feeling…doesn’t get easier.”

So why do I put up with it? Because theatre makes me feel connected and useful and alive. Like I’m firing on all creative cylinders. The uncertainty of “The Business” can be heartbreaking. You have to give it your all at each audition only to let go of control of the outcome. It’s a difficult thing to really want something and also release it. But I guess that’s a lesson we all encounter in life in one way or another.

Focusing on understanding a story in order to make people laugh or change their hearts and minds is really what it’s about. And getting the opportunity to do that even in an audition that might not go my way is what keeps me going. When I do get a role, I’m reminded how lucky I am to be in this line of work. Theatre is an empathy machine and probably the closest thing I’ve found to a true religious experience. People gathering together to focus on stories of our common humanity? I mean, come on, we could use a lot more of that.

I know that this is what I saw as a kid when my family took me to the theatre. Adults using their power and knowledge to create make-believe. And now that I am one of those so-called adults I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.

Contact Info:

• Website: mattdengler.com / https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThrownStoneStudio
• Instagram: @mattdengler @thrownstonestudio

Image Credits

Headshot by Michael Kushner
Avenue Q Curtain call photo by Walter McBride