To most performers, receiving a coveted Actors’ Equity Association union card means one has truly arrived as a professional. It’s a rite of passage, a privilege and an honor, proving to the world you’ve earned your stripes and your rightful place in the pantheon of performers. However, actually making a living as a member of AEA, especially outside of New York City, all too often comes with some startling realities that turn the sweet accomplishment of owning that union card into onerous burdens it can strap onto an actor’s career.
Ask Elijah Word what drew him into the singing, dancing and acting sphere, and the tall, lanky, nearly 28-year-old performer with deep familial roots in Broward County and performance chops earned throughout South Florida may regale you with this story.
If you’ve ever seen Krystal Millie Valdes onstage in one of her many acclaimed South Florida star turns, you might be surprised to learn that she was once so intimidated by the cliquey kids in her middle school drama program that it took her until high school to work up the courage to try her hand at acting at all.
Playwright and actor Tom Dugan has truly perfected the art of the one-person show — having created five thus far — and will bring two of them to the Mizner Park Cultural Center in December: “Wiesenthal” and “Tell Him It’s Jackie.”
Danielle LaVia’s whole life in the theatre has prepared her for the unique and exciting opportunity she now embraces as founder and executive artistic director of the newly formed Charleston Playhouse in South Carolina.
An established stage, TV and film actress; writer, producer, director, voice-over artist and frequent frontwoman for television commercials, Miami Beach native Jill Melody is admittedly “driven” in her chosen pursuits.
Main Street Players is coming back from the pandemic with a bang with Wolf And Badger, the first of two world-premiere new plays that will make up the company’s abbreviated 2021 season.
Ironically enough for a play as funny and fun-filled as Off Balance, its world premiere is now taking place at Empire Stage under some uniquely tragic circumstances. The show is among the last works completed by the late local playwright Michael Aman, who died of brain cancer last May.
Towards the end of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Theseus asks, “What revels are in hand? Is there no play, to ease the anguish of a torturing hour?”
Though Suki Lopez’s first performing arts passion was for dancing, it didn’t take her long to catch the musical theatre bug. “Throughout my childhood I was very focused on ballet and I did summer programs with ABT and Joffrey and all that…it was actually, one of my trips to New York for these summer programs that I sort of fell in love with Broadway and was like oh wait, I can do this… so I kind of switched gears in high school and shifted my focus,” she explains.
