Aaron Mitchell Reese is one of those kids you see around Columbia that can literally do it all. And as a 21-year-old senior graduating in the spring, this is surely only the beginning of his rousing journey.
Reese is a complete “theatre kid”, getting his start back in high school at Seton Academy in their spring musical “Little Shop of Horrors” after being encouraged by his drama teacher Lynne Simari.
“Naturally, I was apprehensive at first because I’d never sang before. So she gave me a tape with one of the songs and I just practiced my ass off and watched the film,” he says.
Reese went on to get the part of the voice of Audrey 2, “the soul-singing man-eating plant.” It was then that he learned that not only did he have a knack for acting–he could sing, too.
After joining the school choir and participating in several other school productions, Reese set his sights on Columbia. It was here that he became a theatre directing major and an acting minor. He also began composing his own music and writing his own songs.
“I was basically really crushing on a girl and I just articulated her in a poetic fashion and it became a song. Now I just write from a personal stand-point and try to make it universal,” he explains.
And with lyrics like, “It’s like I’m addicted to a potion or a drug, enamored by the curse of your love,” Reese sounds like a modern-day Casanova.
Since being at Columbia, Reese has directed several plays including The Philadelphia by David Ives and The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly Guirgis.
After graduation, he hopes record an EP of his music, become a resident director at a successful theatre company, study in London and eventually become a film/Broadway director/actor.
“Who says I can’t do it all?”
Indeed, he can.