As a storyteller and spoken word artist, H.R. Britton gravitates towards the anxiously comic. Alternating between original monologues and literary adaptations, he has been spinning yarns in New York City since 1999. His most recent monologue, From Madison to Madurai: 134 Days in Mother India is a humorous and sometimes sobering look at Britton’s four-and-a-half month stay in India. While celebrating the inspiration that led him there, and the real awe of some of his experiences, the piece also exposes the misconceptions and hidden romanticism that characterized his trip and not infrequently led to mishap and deflation. Britton debuted the piece at UNDER St. Mark’s in the East Village in 2006.

In 2004, Britton debuted his adaptation of Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow in East Village’s Red Room. This conversational adaptation, which is described as “funnier than it is scary,” emphasizes the all-too-human awkwardness of Ichabod Crane, and the comic collision of his self-importance with his fears. ElectronicLink.com says “He finds charm and humor in the nuances ... [w]ith little else than his voice.” Hi! Drama said Britton “has the ability to have you forget your surroundings and escape into the story he’s telling.” He went on to perform Sleepy Hollow at the 2005 Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and Frankford Arts Festival, and the Andes Society for History and Culture in Andes, New York.

With director Alison Lani Broda he won acclaim for Gogol’s The Nose at the New York International Fringe Festival in 2001. ElectronicLink.com called the production “a lot of fun.” Hi! Drama called Britton “a most incredible storyteller.” And FringeNYC Propaganda called Britton “an extremely likeable performer” and praised his “clear physicality and vocal dexterity.”

The Edward Lear-influenced Pieces of Calico Pie (2001) tells the humorous and haunting tales from a boyhood populated with animals. It premiered at the Dumbo Theater Exchange (DTX) and has been featured at Brooklyn Information & Culture (BRIC), the Dumbo Art Under the Bridge Festival, One Arm Red, and The Auk in Hamden, New York.

Since 1999 Britton has also meditated on academic madness in his tragi-comic monologue The Kafka Thesis, where the narrator must create a huge piece of writing without succumbing to the insane authority of his professor and the faceless university bureaucracy. Britton has likened the piece to “doing standup comedy in Weimar Berlin,” and has performed it at The Producer’s Club, DTX, The Dumbo Art Under the Bridge Festival, The Auk, and as a guest of Jane LeCroy with “Transmitting.”

H.R. Britton is a resident of Brooklyn, and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He studied for two summers at the National Shakespeare Conservatory, which led to his involvement in the acclaimed Moonwork Theater Company. Favorite dramatic roles include Starveling in Moonwork’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Snobby Price in Major Barbara, Vladimir in Waiting for Godot, and the Chief Clerk in Kafka’s Metamorphosis at La Mama (about which Show Business Weekly said, “It is in the insincere smile of Britton’s Limko that the whole of Kafka’s oeuvre is summarized.”)

The New York Press says “... catch ... master storyteller H.R. Britton. We've never heard of him either, but you have to admit, he's got a master storyteller's name.”