Michele Shay: Cultivating Empathy (6/7)
In-Person Workshop MICHELE SHAY: Cultivating Empathy During Trying Times What does it mean to be an Actor when so much is needed? End of Season Workshop Dates & Times Friday, June 7, 2024 – 11:00am-4:00pm (with lunch break) Houghton Hall, 22 East 30th Street, 2nd Floor Ballroom About the Workshop Distinguished actor and Professor and Chair of Performance at USC School of Dramatic Arts, Michele Shay, returns to The Actors Center on Friday, June 7th to close out our 2023-24 season. Michele will facilitate a one-day convening—part communal conversation, part artist consciousness raising, and part acting workshop—exploring our role and responsibilities as artists in response to the current global climate. What can we do as storytellers to amplify our collective presence and inspire greater empathy between people? How do we cultivate a resistance of consciousness in the face of pervasive disconnection? Where do doubts about truth originate and how do we get people to take truth seriously? How can we unpack what motivates people, so we can pave the way for a more harmonious existence on this planet? Join us as we reflect on and live amid these questions. We are in tumultuous and judgmental times, but during such periods of upheaval, there is always incredible opportunity for artists to step forward and remind us who we can be as human beings. About Michele Shay Michele Shay—actress, director, educator, and noted interpreter of the works of playwright August Wilson—is perhaps best known for her Tony Award-nominated performance as Louise in August Wilson’s Seven Guitars. She is a veteran actress who has graced stages on and off-Broadway, television and film, and regional theaters across the country. Michele has portrayed Aunt Ester in Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean in productions directed by Kenny Leon, Phylicia Rashad and Ruben Santiago-Hudson; and Mame Wilks in the world premiere of Wilson’s Radio Golf, directed by Timothy Douglas at Yale Rep. Michele has directed seven plays in the Cycle including Fences, Gem of the Ocean, Seven Guitars, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and The Piano Lesson (with Tonya Pinkins, Montae Russell and Glynn Turman for CCAP at the Broad Theatre). Michele participated with a host of other longtime August Wilson collaborators in directing Two Trains and King Hedley II for the NY Public Radio recordings of August Wilson’s American Century Cycle at The Greene Space. She is Professor of Theatre Practice in Acting and Chair of...

