 | This biographical article is written like a résumé .(December 2023) |
Danyah Miller is an English writer and theatre producer.
| This biographical article is written like a résumé .(December 2023) |
Danyah Miller is an English writer and theatre producer.
Danyah Miller trained in drama, dance and English at Bretton Hall College from 1983 to 1986 and L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq from 2002 to 2003. Her first job was as a front of house usher at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. [1]
Miller was the first female front of house manager for Stoll Moss Theatres in 1986, Marketing Manager at the Soho Poly Theatre, General Manager at the Shaftesbury Theatre, and Chief Executive of the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham. [2] She was included in Debrett's People of Today from 1989 for her contribution to British society. [3]
Miller founded theatre production company Wizard Presents in 1999 with her husband John Miller. [4] They produced musicals including All You Need is Love featuring over 50 Lennon & McCartney songs, [5] and Soul Sister , which opened at the Hackney Empire for a limited run before transferring to the Savoy Theatre in August 2012. [6] The musical was nominated for 2013 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical. [7] The production also toured the UK in 2013. [8]
The musical production of Pippi Longstocking played a limited season at Royal and Derngate Northampton in December 2019 [9] [10]
Miller was a regular storyteller on BBC Three Counties Radio for three years and a course leader at The School of Storytelling in East Sussex. [11] Her storytelling tips were published by The Guardian in 2014. [12]
In 2013 Miller adapted and performed I Believe in Unicorns by Michael Morpurgo for the stage with director Dani Parr, produced by Wizard Presents. The production debuted at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, The Pleasance Courtyard in 2013. [13] It toured the UK and transferred to the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End for limited runs in 2014 [14] [15] and 2015. [16] [17] In 2023 the production played the Lyric Theatre for a gala performance in aid of The Reading Agency [18] and the Apollo Theatre for a limited run. [19] Reviews for the show were positive. Victoria Segal in her review for The Sunday Times wrote "keeping small children in their seats takes magic and wonder, qualities that 'I Believe in Unicorns' has in abundance." [20] Neil Norman for The Daily Express commented that "Miller delivers a one-woman show that is pure storytelling, pure theatre and pure magic." [21] I Believe in Unicorns won the Argus Angel Award for Artistic excellence at the Brighton Festival 2014 [22] and the Audience Choice Award for Best Family Welcome at the Get Creative Family Arts Festival 2015 awards. [23]
Miller also adapted and performed Why the Whales Came by Michael Morpurgo, which toured the UK and played a limited season at Ovalhouse in London in 2016. [24] [25] She wrote and performed Perfectly Imperfect Women which opened at Ovalhouse [26] and ran at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Pleasance Courtyard 2017. [27]
Kika's Birthday by John and Danyah Miller opened at Orange Tree Theatre in December 2017. [28] The production transferred to Little Angel Theatre [29] and Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Pleasance Courtyard in 2018. [30]
Miller adapted and narrated an audio version of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett as part of The Secret Garden Experience in 2021 [31] produced by Wizard Presents with Watford Palace Theatre and Oxford Playhouse. [32]
Miller's first book Seven Secrets of Spontaneous Storytelling was published by Hawthorn Press in November 2023. [33] [34] Her stage script of Michael Morpurgo's I Believe in Unicorns, co-adapted with Dani Parr, was published by Oberon Books in 2015. [35]
Beyond the Fringe was a British comedy stage revue written and performed by Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore. It debuted at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival and went on to play in London's West End and then in America, both on tour and on New York's Broadway in the early 1960s. Hugely successful, it is widely regarded as seminal to the "satire boom", the rise of satirical comedy in 1960s Britain.
Pippi Longstocking is the fictional main character in a series of children's books by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren. Pippi was named by Lindgren's daughter Karin, who asked her mother for a get-well story when she was off school.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the world's largest performance arts festival, which in 2024 spanned 25 days and featured more than 51,446 scheduled performances of 3,317 different shows across 262 venues from 58 different countries. Of those shows, the largest section was comedy, representing almost 40% of shows, followed by theatre, which was 26.6% of shows.
Fringe theatre is theatre that is produced outside of the main theatre institutions, and that is often small-scale and non-traditional in style or subject matter. The term comes from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In London, the fringe are small-scale theatres, many of them located above pubs, and the equivalent to New York's Off-Off-Broadway theatres and Europe's "free theatre" groups.
The Great American Trailer Park Musical is a two-act musical, written by David Nehls and Betsy Kelso. It explores the relationships between the tenants at the Armadillo Acres Trailer Park in Starke, Florida, particularly between Pippi, "the stripper on the run," the Dr. Phil-loving agoraphobic, Jeannie, and Jeannie's tollbooth-collector husband, Norbert. It was performed in the first annual New York Music Theater Festival in 2004 and Off-Broadway in 2005.
Sir Michael Andrew Bridge Morpurgo is an English book author, poet, playwright, and librettist who is known best for children's novels such as War Horse (1982). His work is noted for its "magical storytelling", for recurring themes such as the triumph of an outsider or survival, for characters' relationships with nature, and for vivid settings such as the Cornish coast or the trenches of the First World War. Morpurgo was the third Children's Laureate, from 2003 to 2005, and is President of BookTrust, a children's reading charity.
The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking is a 1988 musical adventure film written and directed by Ken Annakin, based on the Pippi Longstocking book series by Astrid Lindgren. It is a Swedish-German-American joint venture produced by Columbia Pictures, Longstocking Productions, and Svensk Filmindustri. While the title suggests a continuation of previous entries, it is in fact a remake of the original story.
Pippi Longstocking is a 1997 animated musical adventure comedy film co-directed by Michael Schaack and Clive A. Smith, and written by Catharina Stackelberg, based on the eponymous children's books by Astrid Lindgren. A joint Swedish-German-Canadian venture produced by Svensk Filmindustri, IdunaFilm, TFC Trickompany and Nelvana, the film features the voices of Melissa Altro, Catherine O'Hara, Gordon Pinsent, Dave Thomas, Wayne Robson and Carole Pope.
Nele-Liis Vaiksoo is an Estonian singer and actress, known for her work in musical theatre.
(I Am) Nobody's Lunch is a 2006 play with music produced by The Civilians, an investigative theater company in New York City. Based on interviews conducted in 2003, the play explores the compromised issues of trust and truth that arose between the American government and its people during the lead-up to the Iraq War. (I Am) Nobody's Lunch was written and directed by Steve Cosson from interviews by the company, with music and lyrics by Michael Friedman.
Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary are a London-based musical theatre writing partnership. They met at Bristol University, where they were studying Drama and Music respectively.
The National Youth Music Theatre (NYMT) is an arts organisation in the United Kingdom providing pre-professional education and musical theatre stage experience for young people. Based in London, it is constituted as a private limited company and as a registered charity. NYMT was founded in 1976 by director and playwright Jeremy James Taylor. Since its inception, it has produced more than fifty productions at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, premièred thirty new musical theatre works, toured several times outside the United Kingdom, and had runs in the West End and on Broadway.
Tim Crouch is a British experimental theatre maker, actor, writer and director. His plays include My Arm, An Oak Tree, ENGLAND, and The Author. These take various forms, but all reject theatrical conventions, especially realism, and invite the audience to help create the work. Interviewed in 2007, Crouch said, "Theatre in its purest form is a conceptual artform. It doesn't need sets, costumes and props, but exists inside an audience's head."
Christina Bianco is an American actress, singer and impressionist. Bianco is best known for her theatrical work, television appearances and YouTube videos in which she impersonates celebrities, both singing and speaking.
Nathan Cassidy is a British comedian, writer, actor and podcaster.
Yolanda Mercy is a British actress and playwright of Nigerian descent. In addition to her work as a writer and performer, she leads theatre workshops and mentors young artists.
Chris Goode was a British playwright, theatre director, performer, and poet. He was the artistic director of Camden People's Theatre from 2001 to 2004, and led the ensemble Chris Goode and Company until its closure in 2021.
Benjamin Hart is an English magician. In 2007, he was awarded the "Young Magician of the Year" award by The Magic Circle. Hart has worked on British television and is an inventor and designer of magic tricks and stage illusions. In 2014, he starred in Killer Magic on BBC Three. Hart was a finalist on Britain's Got Talent in 2019. He is a member of The Magic Circle (organisation)
Gbolahan Obisesan is a British Nigerian writer and director. He was the Artistic Director and Joint CEO at Brixton House theatre. He has served as a Genesis Fellow and Associate Director at the Young Vic.
Austentatious (An Improvised Jane Austen Novel) is a long-form improvised comedy show, in the style of a Jane Austen novel, where each show is improvised by a six-strong cast, based on a title suggested by a member of the audience. Beginning in 2011 in London, the original cast members took the show to the Edinburgh Festival Free Fringe in the summer of 2012. Following their initial success, they began performing a monthly show in London, transferring to the West End in 2017, and have since performed on BBC Radio 4, on tour, and at the Edinburgh Fringe.