Mercedes Herrero

Mercedes Herrero
Visiting Faculty

Mercedes Herrero is an award-winning actress with over 30 years of professional experience in Theatre, Film and Television. She is an ensemble member of Moisés Kaufman’s Tectonic Theatre Project, and is currently in her third season as Vanessa Morrison on House of Cards.


Biography

Herrero has collaborated on 15 world premieres including works by Lynn Nottage, Nilo Cruz, Lynn Redgrave, Alan Ayckbourn, Moisés Kaufman, Catherine Filloux and Craig Wright. Recent credits include: the Tony-winning Broadway production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (The Barrymore Theatre), The Laramie Project/TLP: 10 Years Later (BAM), Seven Homeless Mammoths (Two River), and A Streetcar Named Desire (Yale Rep). Classical parts include: Queen Elizabeth in Richard III opposite Peter Dinklage (The Public), Mistress Quickly opposite Liev Shrieber in Henry V (The Delacorte in Central Park), Goneril in King Lear (Indiana Rep), Paulina in The Winter’s Tale and Gertrude in Hamlet (Asolo Rep) and Angustias in The House of Bernarda Alba (Intar). Film and TV credits include: all four Law & Orders, Deception, Arranged, The Tao of Steve, Sidney Hall, and House of Cards. Ms. Herrero taught a course on Twentieth Century Spanish Theatre (in Spanish) at The Language School in Middlebury College for two summers, and has been a guest artist at Fordham University, NYU, and Yale University. Recently she was the keynote speaker at the Virginia Theatre Conference where she taught a Moment Workshop, the technique used by Tectonic Theatre Project for writing performance. Along with her company members, she received the Bay Area Circle Critics Award (BACCA) for Best Ensemble for The Laramie Project; she was awarded the Sarasota Magazine Best Supporting Actress Award for Paulina in The Winter’s Tale; and received two acting awards while at Yale: the Richard Ward Memorial Scholarship and the Herschel Williams Acting Award. Herrero holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Virginia, and an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama. She was a visiting faculty member at Bennington for Spring 2017.