A three-time Acting Fellow at the American Shakespeare Center (2025-26), Guy Aiken might be the only classical actor you’ll ever meet who has a PhD in American religious history (Univ of Virginia, 2017). After teaching in the humanities at Villanova University (2017-21), he and his wife moved back to Charlottesville—where he resumed performing and training in Shakespeare, at Mary Baldwin University (MLitt, 2027) and the ASC.

Guy was born and raised in Cincinnati. In undergrad, after a year traveling and performing with Up With People (1997-98), he interned in dramaturgy with Jaq Bessell at the Globe in London over the summer of 2001, critically documenting the theater’s productions of King Lear, Macbeth, and Cymbeline under the artistic direction of Mark Rylance. Guy finished that summer with a 4-week course at RADA in acting Shakespeare.

After undergrad, Guy was an acting intern at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati (2002-03) and played King Arthur in a professional production of Camelot (Covedale Center for the Performing Arts, 2003). During grad school he played, among other roles, Sganarelle in The Imaginary Cuckold and Preacher Casy in The Grapes of Wrath (Wake Forest University, 2010-11) and Kiil in An Enemy of the People (UVA, 2013). While teaching at Villanova, he performed his own selection and translation of Gospel episodes and produced and performed in an evening of Shakespeare scenes and monologues for first-year students.

At Mary Baldwin, Guy has played Gloucester in 1 Henry VI (2023) and Leontes in The Winter’s Tale (2023) and trained with Matt Davies, Doreen Bechtol, Constance Swain, and Nancy Anderson.

At the ASC, Guy has been activated to play Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol (2025) and Doc Gibbs and Constable Warren in Our Town (2026).