Ahead of a new Broadway show, Michael Mainwaring isn’t taking his Potomac roots for granted

Michael Mainwaring had already landed professional acting gigs by the time he enrolled in Potomac’s Winston Churchill High School.

He spent most of his years there trying to get back onstage.

Now 32, Mainwaring has done just that. He’s about to appear in his second Broadway show, “Galileo,” an original rock musical about the astronomer widely referred to as the father of modern science.

The rock musical stars four-time Tony Award nominee Raúl Esparza (“The Rocky Horror Show,” “Company,” “Tick, Tick... Boom!”), Tony and Grammy Award nominee Joy Woods (“Gypsy,” “Little Shop of Horrors,” “The Notebook”) and Javier Muñoz (“Hamilton,” “In the Heights”). It chronicles the story of Galileo defending his revolutionary discoveries about the universe in the face of threats from the Catholic Church.

Mainwaring spoke to The Banner about what he’s learned from his performing roots at Churchill and in professional theaters in and around Maryland ahead of his debut in “Galileo” this fall.

Turning a nightmare into a dream

Outside of performances at Wayside Elementary School in Potomac, Mainwaring’s introduction to live theater was in fourth grade, when he was cast in Churchill’s production of “The Music Man.” Mainwaring recalled the stuff of literal nightmares: His pants fell down one night while he was onstage.

It didn’t temper his love for performance.

“I guess part of me thought that’s something I should do for the rest of my life,” Mainwaring said, laughing. “For some reason, it just clicked. Even in its scariest moments, it’s still something that I love to do.”

From there, Mainwaring graduated to the pros, getting cast in a 2005 production of “Oliver!” at Olney Theatre Center and landing roles at Ford’s Theatre in D.C.

Mainwaring enrolled in Churchill and again found himself performing on the stage where he had made his debut as an elementary school kid. But he wanted to return to professional acting.

“Churchill is an extremely intense academic focus. It’s very high achieving,” he said. “And, as somebody that was already set on the fact that I wanted to be onstage and be in the arts, it was difficult for me to feel like I had a place there.”

Mainwaring’s parents remained supportive — especially his mother, Valerie Mainwaring, who worked as an English teacher at Churchill and told other teachers he made up for his lack of attention to schoolwork with his commitment to a theater career.

“She really protected me and made it a lot easier for me to chase my dreams,” he said.

After about a year at Montgomery College, Mainwaring booked a contract at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, which he parlayed into future performances at Arena Stage, Ford’s Theatre, Olney Theatre, Imagination Stage, Round House Theatre and the Kennedy Center, along with two Helen Hayes Award nominations.

“I observed everything,” Mainwaring said of his time in the DMV theater scene. “If I didn’t need to be in the room, I was probably still in the room. I just watched and learned and saw how other people behaved and interacted with the creatives.”

He realized his Broadway aspirations in 2024, when he landed a role in the ensemble for “Swept Away,” an Avett Brothers jukebox musical that had a limited run on the Great White Way.

A couple of years later, Mainwaring received an offer to join the ensemble of “Galileo,” a reunion with his “Swept Away” director, Michael Mayer, and choreographer, David Neumann. The show chronicles the Catholic Church’s refusal to accept Galileo’s findings, examining what happens when new discoveries challenge a person’s beliefs.

“Now I feel like it’s really paying off,” Mainwaring said of his time working in the local theater scene. “I’m glad I didn’t take anything for granted.”