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CAST
Amanda Lamberti has always had a natural proclivity for what makes for good drama – as well as personality traits that aligned with her role as Nicole in TRAP. A self-described “idealistic, sensitive and very serious” young woman, it nonetheless took being laid off from a drafting job and a friend with the number of an acting class to finally unleash the performer within. The subsequent years of study lead to numerous Detroit-area independent films and theatrical productions, including her favorite, Shakespeare in Las Vegas (“Othello and Desdemona own a hotel/casino – need I say more?”) in which Amanda played no fewer than five roles. Amanda only played one person in TRAP, but that one role required a willingness to face some of the darkest aspects of human nature. Nicole is the innocent, a woman who’s viciously abused and yet is still determined to do the right thing. Amanda sights growing up without a father as the key to finding Nicole’s “desperation to be loved.” That pain also fueled Nicole’s anger as she faces off with the man who would be her murderer.
Ed Nahhat, who plays Chandler in TRAP, almost didn’t get to work with the likes of Jeff Daniels, Penny Marshall and Billy Crystal. He almost gave up acting entirely in favor of being a lawyer. “I went to law school because I was disillusioned with acting. I returned to acting because I was disillusioned with lawyering.” Now he balances his two passions via “a calling” to contribute to his community: When he’s not guiding clients through the legal system, he’s busy with his Michigan-based theatre company and acting in commercials, plays and locally-shot films. Ed’s mother sent him on an audition for the church play at six, hoping to “get me out of my shell. It worked. She regrets it.” She also couldn’t have guessed that it would lead to the starring role as the murderous Chandler, hen-pecked husband of Amy. Ed first read Chandler for director James Bonner at a staged reading for TRAP and “really got into the dark humor and bumbling self-centeredness” of the character. A very physical actor, Ed threw himself into the role, resulting in plenty of physical pain to go with his character’s psychic pain. Whether it’s helping his clients through difficult times or writing and producing plays both in New York and Michigan (the ’05 summer season of Shakespeare in the Park in Royal Oak wrapped with “As You Like It”), Ed is a driven man. It’s a characteristic he shares with his on-screen alter ego. Despite his long list of credentials, Ed prefers to make his dreams come true in Michigan. “I like the challenge of this environment because there is a sense that it can’t be done here, so when you do, it’s that much more special.” 2005 will see Ed trying cases in Federal Court and producing Shakespeare in the Park in Royal Oak, a program he founded, bringing the same dedication and energy to those challenges as he did to TRAP.
Heather Kozlakowski doesn’t see her character Amy, TRAP’s de facto villainess, as evil, or even mean. “She is having fun! Who hasn’t had fun at someone else’s expense?” Starring in this dark look at the gory insides of an abusive marriage is a far cry from Heather’s childhood of performing for the cows on her family’s farm in Sanilac County, Michigan. After studying at the Actor’s Workshop in Royal Oak, and then with Stephen Black of the Talent Group, Heather took to the Detroit-area stage, screen and air waves. Often cast as the “strong woman,” she specializes in character roles that allow her to “be able to be another part of myself that not everyone else sees.” Director James Bonner spotted her dark side while working with her on another feature shoot, and pegged her for TRAP’s gleefully manipulative Amy. He gave Heather plenty of leeway in creating Amy’s tumultuous world, including painting the art that decorated Amy and Chandler’s eclectic apartment. But there were many more aspects of herself that Heather had to access in order to play the slippery character: “Amy has many faces: how Nicole sees her, how Chandler sees her, how she sees herself and how she really is. She is not just the ‘bitch.’” Between jobs on local indy films, she works as a Vocal Performance instructor at a Michigan arts school. “I help my students make discoveries that they never knew were there. When they start to see for themselves, I literally get chills.” Heather delivers more chills in TRAP as the tyrannical, tragic Amy. Bradley K. Ross didn’t start off an actor. While he did go straight to LA after college, he didn’t get the acting bug until after working in film production for several years and then nabbed parts in Maverick and On Deadly Ground as well as several commercials and indy films. His very first job, though, was quintessentially Hollywood: he was one of Universal Studio’s Tour Guides. Bradley says he “explained the process of making movies to tourists from all around the world. Funny thing was, I really had no idea how to make a movie.” But Bradley has a knack for learning from whatever source is available: he learned about filmmaking while touring sets, and claims he learned how to be a wife beater by watching Cops. Bradley’s prankish sense of humor is nowhere to be found in Steve, the man whose violent nature has driven his wife to suicide. Winning the gruesome role came from meeting director James Bonner at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000. Bradley had a starring role in the break-out hit Groove, and Jim was helping the director, an old college buddy, promote his film. When Bradley heard the story of Jim’s intended film -- “a cool and twisted story only Jim could write” -- he immediately wanted in. Bradley sights films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Back to the Future as the sort of stories that get his creative juices flowing, but, in keeping with his dynamic personality, it’s a future of “directing scary movies” that he’s aiming for. Perhaps, then, it’s no surprise that his favorite scene while shooting TRAP involved “him and a lot of blood.” |
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