Full Biography — Presented in Three ActsTony Lopresti
Tony speaks volumes. Sometimes he uses words. An international artist based in New York City, Tony is a silent actor - an accomplished mime in the classical tradition of Marcel Marceau and of Moni and Mina Yakim. But he does speak – as an actor, choreographer, teacher and writer, as an award-winning director and producer and even as a podcaster.
Act I: Radio Silence
Tony attended La Salle University in his hometown of Philadelphia, which included a year at the international bilingual University of Fribourg in Switzerland.
Following time as a therapist with children and families in Boston, Tony came to New York as program director and operations manager at WEVD-AM-FM – The Station that Speaks Your Language! One of the country’s youngest broadcast executives, he oversaw programs in 17 languages, developing new programming and offering producers new opportunities to modernize and expand their shows - and to adapt to a new technology called “computers”. On-air, New Yorkers could hear his voice saying, This is a test. This is only a test…
After that polyglot world, Tony turned to silence. Following an apprenticeship, he became a principal performer in Moni and Mina Yakim’s New York Pantomime Theatre. With the company, he was a guest star with Marcel Marceau in Bip Around the World, toured abroad, performed at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and appeared in an HBO special. Then the bottom fell out of the mime world.
Act II: Captured by NYPD
While continuing to perform in films and TV commercials, Tony kept writing: developing ads for American Express and other corporate clients. One was New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority where he wrote ads and signage for the subways. He was asked to help produce a series of videos for the incoming chief of the Transit Police Department, William Bratton.
He worked with the Department’s Video Unit, whose sergeant, James O’Neill, served as NYPD Commissioner from 2016 to 2019. Tony produced a modern, quick-paced video about Chief Bratton’s plans to help the more than 5,000 people who lived in the subway tunnels.
Chief Bratton and the subway cops liked the video, which effectively communicated the new strategy. Chief Bratton invited Tony to produce more videos. That led to a five-year consultancy with Chief Bratton at the Transit Police, and then with the Boston Police Department after Bratton became the Police Commissioner there.
When Bratton returned to New York as Police Commissioner, he invited Tony to join the team. Thinking it would be fun for a year or two, Tony accepted and became the NYPD’s Director of Video Production where he supervised a team of police officers and detectives who were also accomplished video producers.
The two years stretched to twenty-two. He produced about 3,500 training, motivational and informational videos, including the iconic NYPD logo video Heroes narrated by James Earl Jones.
But during all his law enforcement years, Tony never stopped performing, including a stint as a member of the Alliance Repertory Theatre in Los Angeles and in local clubs and cabarets introducing “sketch comedy”.
Act III: International Artist
Tony remains a storyteller – acting and writing – with words or without. Whether developing a mime production or a physical theatre piece, Tony has said that he writes not with pen and paper, but with his body, and with the bodies of others.
Since 2009, he began his reprise of his mime and physical theatre experiences on the shores of Lake Como in Italy as the Mime Director for the Festival Musica sull'Acqua (Music Festival on the Water) where he has conceived, directed, choreographed, and performed in full-length classical mime productions – with up to 30 performers – to accompany Festival orchestras.
His collaboration with Festival Artistic Director, violinist Francesco Senese, has led to the founding of MuMo, a new artistic language fusing classical music and classical movement into an exciting and modern expression that crosses all language and culture barriers. These works include Apocalypse Man, Tony’s original silent theatre production which he performs with Francesco playing Belá Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin.
In 2018, Tony was invited to Dakar, Senegal, where he developed the mime / music performance Get Up! Take Care of Your Planet!, an ensemble production highlighting the country’s profound environmental challenges.
In 2019, he choreographed and directed Joy’s Story, the harrowing true story of a trafficked young woman.
Later that year he became Movement Director for the Academy of Sacred Drama which presents rediscovered baroque oratorios.
In 2020, he made his podcast debut with Living in Two Epicenters where he reflects on the Novel Coronavirus Pandemic from the point of view of living in two epicenters – New York, and Lombardy in Italy, and from the point of view of two professions – as a silent actor and as a former member of the NYPD.
And now…
Tony lives in Manhattan with his wife. Their two children are pursuing acting and writing careers in New York City. Take a sneak peek!