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Vernice Miller, founding artistic director
VERNICE P. MILLER is an international theatre artist who has spent the last two decades exploring the common threads between East and West actor training and its application to contemporary theater practices. She is an educator, writer, director and award winning actor who resides in New York City. In 1995 along with Joann Maria Yarrow she founded ALAT as a venue to further the work they had begun with Roberta Carreri at Eugenio Barba's Odin Teatret in Denmark.
Highlights from Ms. Miller’s directing career include a five year collaboration with Pulitzer Prize winner, jazz musician Wynton Marsalis on a stage adaptation of Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Workshops were produced by The McCarter Theater Center, Women’s Project and Productions, New York Theatre Workshop, at The Manhattan Theatre Club and with Amas Musical Theatre. For this project Ms. Miller worked with actors Leslie Uggams, Tamara Tunie, Keith David and Novella Nelson among others. Also Ms. Miller directed Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott’s Pantomime for Payomet Performing Arts Center in Truro, Massachusetts. Based on the success of that production Mr. Walcott invited Ms. Miller to work with him developmentally on his musical Marie La Veau.
As director Ms. Miller enjoys a close collaboration with actress, comedienne Hazelle Goodman. For the past six years they have toured together with a number of projects including On Edge, which headlined at the HBO comedy festival in Aspen, Colorado, Color on Edge and To the Top! Top! Top! Ms. Goodman’s acclaimed HBO special. In New York they have been produced at H.E.R.E. Arts Center, New York Theatre Workshop, The Public Theatre, Aaron Davis Hall and at The SoHo Playhouse. Among other venues they have toured are; Noorderzon Festival in Groningen, Netherlands, Yale Repertory, John Harms Center for the Arts, New Jersey and at the Spoleto Festival in North Carolina.
Other directing credits include; Final Call by Michael Bradford commissioned and produced by Urban Stages: Hang Tough:Martina by and with Audrey Pernell, Uncommon Women and Others by Wendy Wasserstein produced by American Festival Theatre, Edinbourgh Fringe Festival, Edinbourgh, Scotland. The Dream Inside, produced by Skolen Teatret, Dans og Musik Silkebourg, Denmark; (Not) From Our Town, produced by Skolen Teatret, Dans og Musik in Silkebourg, Denmark and at The Greenwich Street Theatre, New York City; Streetcar Named Desire produced by Island Theatre Workshop, Martha’s Vineyard, MA. New York: This Will Be the Death of Him by David DeWitt produced by Circle East (formerly Circle Repertory Company Lab) and Chashama; Please Don’t Feed the Children by Michelle Fadem produced by ManhattanTheatreSource;
In the years1999-2001 Ms. Miller directed Jessye Norman, Audra McDonald, Lawrence Hamilton, LaChanze and many others in the performance segment at the 16th, 17th and 18th annual benefits for The partnership for the Homeless. Then in 1999 at The Manhattan Center she directed the benefit To Amadou With Love - Save Our Sons with West African born Angelique Kidjo and the Nirobi born super model Iman, that was instrumental in establishing The Amadou Diallo Criminal Justice Award at The City College of New York, by Hazelle Goodman.
As a performer Ms. Miller’s recent New York credits include: Broadway: Disorderly Conduct - Brave New World: American Theater Responds to 9/11(dir. George C. White); Off-B’way & Regional: The Trial of One Short Sighted Black Woman…(dir. Paul Carter Harrison) New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Queens Theater in the Park. Also with Gabrielle Lansner Salt Chocolate and Frankie's Wedding. Film/TV: Law & Order (NBC), Through The Wire, (PBS), Flaming Armadillo (National Swiss TV), The Golden Boat (dir. Raoul Ruiz, The New York Film Festival), Leo Sonnyboy (dir. Rolf Lyssy, New Directors New Films). She is a recipient of the London New Play Festival’s Best Actress Award.
Currently Ms. Miller teaches at Rutgers University, New Jersey and Bard High school Early College, New York. Among others, she has trained with Ryszard Cieslack, Jacques Chwat, Jerzy Grotowski of the Polish Laboratory Theater and with Maggie Flannigan in New York City. She is a member of EPIC Theatre Ensemble and has held membership with Women’s Project & Productions Directors Forum, The Lark Theatre Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Going to the River Festival, Titans Theatre Company and Richard Schechner’s East Coast Artists. Ms. Miller has shared artistic directorship for Five Moon Theater Company with Seth Baumrin and heads The Hansberry Project with Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr.
Highlights from Ms. Miller’s directing career include a five year collaboration with Pulitzer Prize winner, jazz musician Wynton Marsalis on a stage adaptation of Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Workshops were produced by The McCarter Theater Center, Women’s Project and Productions, New York Theatre Workshop, at The Manhattan Theatre Club and with Amas Musical Theatre. For this project Ms. Miller worked with actors Leslie Uggams, Tamara Tunie, Keith David and Novella Nelson among others. Also Ms. Miller directed Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott’s Pantomime for Payomet Performing Arts Center in Truro, Massachusetts. Based on the success of that production Mr. Walcott invited Ms. Miller to work with him developmentally on his musical Marie La Veau.
As director Ms. Miller enjoys a close collaboration with actress, comedienne Hazelle Goodman. For the past six years they have toured together with a number of projects including On Edge, which headlined at the HBO comedy festival in Aspen, Colorado, Color on Edge and To the Top! Top! Top! Ms. Goodman’s acclaimed HBO special. In New York they have been produced at H.E.R.E. Arts Center, New York Theatre Workshop, The Public Theatre, Aaron Davis Hall and at The SoHo Playhouse. Among other venues they have toured are; Noorderzon Festival in Groningen, Netherlands, Yale Repertory, John Harms Center for the Arts, New Jersey and at the Spoleto Festival in North Carolina.
Other directing credits include; Final Call by Michael Bradford commissioned and produced by Urban Stages: Hang Tough:Martina by and with Audrey Pernell, Uncommon Women and Others by Wendy Wasserstein produced by American Festival Theatre, Edinbourgh Fringe Festival, Edinbourgh, Scotland. The Dream Inside, produced by Skolen Teatret, Dans og Musik Silkebourg, Denmark; (Not) From Our Town, produced by Skolen Teatret, Dans og Musik in Silkebourg, Denmark and at The Greenwich Street Theatre, New York City; Streetcar Named Desire produced by Island Theatre Workshop, Martha’s Vineyard, MA. New York: This Will Be the Death of Him by David DeWitt produced by Circle East (formerly Circle Repertory Company Lab) and Chashama; Please Don’t Feed the Children by Michelle Fadem produced by ManhattanTheatreSource;
In the years1999-2001 Ms. Miller directed Jessye Norman, Audra McDonald, Lawrence Hamilton, LaChanze and many others in the performance segment at the 16th, 17th and 18th annual benefits for The partnership for the Homeless. Then in 1999 at The Manhattan Center she directed the benefit To Amadou With Love - Save Our Sons with West African born Angelique Kidjo and the Nirobi born super model Iman, that was instrumental in establishing The Amadou Diallo Criminal Justice Award at The City College of New York, by Hazelle Goodman.
As a performer Ms. Miller’s recent New York credits include: Broadway: Disorderly Conduct - Brave New World: American Theater Responds to 9/11(dir. George C. White); Off-B’way & Regional: The Trial of One Short Sighted Black Woman…(dir. Paul Carter Harrison) New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Queens Theater in the Park. Also with Gabrielle Lansner Salt Chocolate and Frankie's Wedding. Film/TV: Law & Order (NBC), Through The Wire, (PBS), Flaming Armadillo (National Swiss TV), The Golden Boat (dir. Raoul Ruiz, The New York Film Festival), Leo Sonnyboy (dir. Rolf Lyssy, New Directors New Films). She is a recipient of the London New Play Festival’s Best Actress Award.
Currently Ms. Miller teaches at Rutgers University, New Jersey and Bard High school Early College, New York. Among others, she has trained with Ryszard Cieslack, Jacques Chwat, Jerzy Grotowski of the Polish Laboratory Theater and with Maggie Flannigan in New York City. She is a member of EPIC Theatre Ensemble and has held membership with Women’s Project & Productions Directors Forum, The Lark Theatre Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Going to the River Festival, Titans Theatre Company and Richard Schechner’s East Coast Artists. Ms. Miller has shared artistic directorship for Five Moon Theater Company with Seth Baumrin and heads The Hansberry Project with Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr.
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Seth Baumrin PhD., literary director
Seth Baumrin was born in Baltimore in 1957 and saw the Beatles perform at Shea Stadium in 1966. He now lives in Manhattan whenever he is not trekking through the outlands of experimental theatres in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
Baumrin, a director and theatre historian, is the author of “Ketmanship in Opole: Jerzy Grotowski and the Price of Free Expression” in The Drama Review (T– 204) Winter 2009; as well “Theatre Ethics and the Performer’s Amoral Duties: an Axiology for the Actor.” in Mêlée, a Polish-language quarterly devoted to philosophy, culture, and literature; a publication of the Department of Ethics, Institute of Philosophy, Jagellonian University, Kraków, Poland; “Where is my Grotowski? The Masquerade Plays On” in New Theatre Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, November 2009, 360-62; “Les Kurbas Theatre, Lviv, 2008” in Slavic and Eastern European Performance, Spring, 2009, 29-38; “Anarcho-Radical Roots—Opole to Oslo to Holstebro 1959-69; Eugenio Barba’s Early Experimental Theatre as Intervention” in Vectors of the Radical: Textual Exchange, Global Radicalism, and the 60s; “No Longer in Search of an Author, a Character Defines Herself; Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author Viewed within the Context of Eugenio Barba’s Experimental Performance Methodology” in Modern Drama; and “Jig Cook: Stage Manager for an American Renaissance” Journal of American Drama and Theatre. Baumrin has also directed over sixty theatre and opera productions, including Il Furioso (a dual language production of Aeschylus’ Furies), 2009; Darius Milhaud’s Medée, 2005; Federico Garcia Lorca’s As Five Years Pass, 2002; Calderon de la Barca’s Life is a Dream for the Chamizal Festival in Juarez Mexico, 1998; and Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding, with Vernice Miller in the leading role, for Five Moon Theatre on Martha’s Vineyard in 1983.
Baumrin’s Grotowski’s Poland will be published by Routledge in fall, 2011. Baumrin is now at work on The Assassination of Les Kurbas: State Sanctioned Murder of a Generation of Twentieth Century Ukrainian Theatre Artists.
