Michelle Danner, Actor-Director-Episode #285

Storybeat with Steve Cuden

Actor-director Michelle Danner is also an acting coach at the Los Angeles Acting School who specializes in the Meisner, Strasberg, Adler, Hagen, Chekhov and Stanislavsky techniques. Alongside Larry Moss, she’s also the founding and Artistic Director of the Edgemar Center for the Arts.

In 2006, Michelle made her feature film directing debut with, How to Go Out on a Date in Queens, winning the L.A. Film Awards' Best Acting and Best Movie awards. Her 2013 film, HelloHerman, catalogs the effect that peer abuse, parental neglect and the general coarsening of society has on a typical high school student.

Michelle has acted in and directed over thirty plays in Los Angeles and New York, with her favorite acting credit cited as the Dramalogue award-winning Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo.

Among her other award-winning stage work, she produced The Night of the Black Cat at Edgemar, she directed the world premiere of Mental the Musical, and she wrote and directed You're on the Air, an improvisation-based comedy.

Michelle also produced and acted in the award-winning short Dos Corazones, directed by Larry Moss. And she was voted favorite acting coach by the readers of Backstage.

Notable projects Michelle has directed include: Bad Impulse with Paul Sorvino, Ticket to the Circus, a one-woman play about the life of Norris Church Mailer, starring Anne Archer. And most recently she produced and directed the feature, Miranda's Victim, a biographical crime drama depicting the origins of the well-known Miranda warning. The movie stars Abigail Breslin, Luke Wilson, Andy Garcia, Donald Sutherland, Ryan Phillippe, Kyle MacLachlan, Mireille Enos, Taryn Manning, and Emily VanCamp. I’ve seen Miranda’s Victim and can tell you it’s an intense and deeply emotional story about how the legal system can be impacted and changed by overcoming injustice amid challenging circumstances.

www.michelledanner.com

www.edgemarcenter.org