David Skeist is a native New Yorker born to two psychiatrists. He discovered acting at age 8, and at around age 16, it overtook zoo-keeping as his chosen life’s ambition.

In New York, he appeared recently in Classic Stage Company’s Moliere Cycle as Alceste in The Misanthrope, and as a gypsy and M. Loyal in Scapin and Tartuffe respectively. He also appeared in The Comfort and Safety of Your own Home (“Top 10 in 2004” - NY Theater Wire), a production of the International WOW Company in whose upcoming film Memorial Day he also appears. Regionally and internationally David has performed in Boston, Edinburgh, and on the streets of France, Spain, and Portugal; he will be traveling to Berlin in May to perform Gertrude Stein’s Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights.

David’s last three years have been spent at Columbia University’s School of the Arts culminating in his MFA degree in May 2006. At Columbia, he has studied under Kristin Linklater, Niky and Ulla Wolcz, Andrei Serban, Larry Singer, and Lisa Peterson among others, and has appeared in such plays as La Ronde (The Poet), Life is a Dream (Clotaldo), Never as Happy—The Oresteia (Agamemnon, Apollo), and The Threepenny Opera (Macheath). He has also trained in Viewpoints and Suzuki under Anne Bogart and the SITI Company.

Prior to Columbia, David’s theatrical endeavors included dying violently in such plays as Bent (Rudy), Titus Andronicus (Saturninus), and Romeo and Juliet (Romeo), going mad in others such as Amadeus (Mozart), Pirandello’s Henry IV (Henry IV), King Lear (Edgar), and Rhinoceros (Berenger), and once he even got to be happy in The Importance of Being Earnest (Algernon).

David holds a BA from Harvard University where he designed his own major focusing on aesthetics, performance, and ideology, and directed Tennessee Williams’ The Two-Character Play.