Wakefield Alumnus Makes Broadway Debut with Star-Studded Cast

Karl Green has come a long way—from Signature Theatre to Broadway.

On April 9, the former Extraordinary Teen Award winner and Wakefield High School grad made his Broadway debut when Death of a Salesman opened at New York’s Winter Garden Theatre. Green plays Young Bernard in the famed two-act tragedy by Arthur Miller, sharing the stage with three-time Tony Award-winner Nathan Lane in the role of Willy Loman, and two-time Tony Award-winner Laurie Metcal as Linda Loman. Two-time Tony Award-winner Joe Mantello is the director.

“It’s been my dream to be to be on Broadway,” says the 29-year-old, “and I get to be on Broadway with Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf and Joe Mantello at the Winter Garden, with people whose work I grew up watching. It feels like a dream. I’m just so grateful and blessed.”

Getting the Part

To audition for the role, Green says he recorded himself acting opposite a friend on Zoom and submitted the video last November to casting director Taylor Williams. He’d met Williams during his junior year at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, when she led a workshop for acting students.

“I guess I did really well in [the workshop] because then she invited me to audition for what was my second off-Broadway show,” runboyrun, he says. “We just maintained a relationship.”

In December 2025, his manager called and said he’d landed the role of Young Bernard in Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning tale of an aging and disillusioned salesman coming to terms with his failures as a husband and father. “I was so confused…. I couldn’t believe it,” Green says.

Rehearsals started Jan. 26 and quickly became his obsession. “I would sit in the rehearsal room even if my scene wasn’t rehearsing that day or they released us,” he says. “I’d stay because it was exciting to me, to see how it was all coming together. You learn in the watching of it.”

He logged so many hours that at one point, “my iPhone thought the theater was my home.”

The environment is familial. “I think this is the first time they’ve done the show on Broadway where the young boys—Young Bernard, Young Biff, Young Happy—are played by younger actors,” he says, noting the camaraderie he’s developed with fellow castmembers Joaquin Consuelos (son of actors Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos) and New York native Jake Termine.

Bitten By the Acting Bug

An actor since middle school, Green was among the students honored in Arlington Magazine’s 2015 Extraordinary Teen Awards following his portrayal of Emmett Till in Signature Theatre’s production of Janet Langhart Cohen’s one-act play, Anne & Emmett. An icon of the Civil Rights movement, Till was brutally murdered in 1955 in Mississippi for allegedly flirting with a white woman. The role marked the culmination of Green’s four-year run with the “Signature in the Schools” program, during which he performed in four plays and volunteered as an usher.

After graduating from Wakefield High School in 2015, Green studied acting and theater at NYU’s Tisch School. He landed his first off-Broadway role in 2018 in a show called Eve’s Song.

During the pandemic, he decided to attend grad school at the Yale School of Drama. “I got to leave New York and go to Connecticut, where there’s nature and more space. It gave me something to do,” during a time when live theater performances were on hold, he says.

He finished grad school in the spring of 2024 and was “hustling in the city” when he landed the part in Death of a Salesman.

Green has also trained with the Upright Citizens Brigade improv group, British American Drama Academy, Shanghai Theatre Academy and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, where he studied ballet and West African and folkloric Haitian dance. He plays several musical instruments—piano, guitar and djembe—and can perform stage combat.

“Theater will always feel like home,” he says, but he also enjoys the thrill of improv because “I never know what’s going to happen, and there’s always an instant interaction with the audience.”

Hitting Hometown Hot Spots

Green grew up in Arlington’s Barcroft neighborhood and returns home often to see his mother and siblings. His younger brother, a senior at Wakefield, plans to study engineering in college next fall. His sister, an avowed TikTok addict, is his go-to source for the latest hot spots around town. “She’s like, ‘Oh, we need to go here to get rolled ice cream,’ and I’m like, ‘OK, sure, let’s do it—a little Arlington adventure.”

But there’s one place he always revisits: the Shirlington stage where he got his start. “I always try to see what shows are on at Signature Theatre.”

Death of a Salesman will keep him busy through its final performance on Aug. 9. Green says he’s not sure what comes next. He’d like to try TV or film acting to “put another muscle to work,” he says. “I’m open and excited to do it and try it all.”