Matt Mitler

Last updated

Matt Mitler
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)Actor, voice actor, director
Years active1983–present

Matt Mitler (born May 27, 1955) is an American actor. He is also founding director (1997) of Dzieci Theatre (the polish word for "children"), which balances its work on performance with work of service, through creative and therapeutic interaction in hospitals and a variety of institutional settings. The company is firmly dedicated to process and includes in its repertory the critically acclaimed Fools Mass, which was presented at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Barcelona in 2004 and has been a staple since 1999 at The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. Mr. Mitler and Dzieci Theatre are profiled in Working on the Inside: The Spiritual Life Through the Eyes of Actors by Retta Blaney, and are included, under Performance Theatre, in the current edition of The Encyclopedia of Religion.

Contents

Training

Matt Mitler initially trained in Humanistic and Existential Psychology, and Group Process before discovering the healing potential of theatre. He studied with such masters as Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba in theatre; Carl Rogers and R. D. Laing in psychotherapy; and Jean Houston, Ram Dass, Elizabeth Cogburn, and Michel de Salzmann in more esoteric disciplines. Integrating these pursuits became a lifelong process.

Directing and Teaching

From 1977 to 2005, Mitler led non-verbal, physically-oriented therapeutic workshops in a variety of settings including Hutchings Psychiatric Center (NY); The Association for Humanistic Psychology; The National Theatre School of Sweden; New Brunswick and Union Theological Seminaries; The Institute for Clergy Excellence; The Heart of the Healer Foundation; The Parliament for the World's Religions; and the graduate school of The University of Psychology of Warsaw, where his essay, Art and Therapy was published in the anthology, New Directions in Psychotherapy.

He performed, directed, taught, and formed the international theatre collective The Tribe in Amsterdam, which presented interactive works at a variety of therapeutic institutions and was featured at Le Festival Mondial du Theatre in Nancy, France. Other festivals, which presented Mitler’s work, include: The Koln Festival, Vienna Festwochen, The International Festival of Fools, The Gaukler Festival of Mime, The International Festival of Mimes and Pantomimes (Poland), and The Theatre of Nations.

Mitler has designed and directed more than 80 theatrical productions; among them, his own adaptation of Nathaniel West’s Miss Lonely Hearts for the 29th Street Repertory Theatre; the critically acclaimed musical Sofrito, featuring The Latin Legends All Stars, for the New Victory Theater; and the apocalyptic epic Dirty Money (also co-author) for Teatr Am Turm in Frankfurt, Germany. He has also staged the works of dozens of solo artists and ensembles at a variety of NYC venues including The Samuel Beckett Theatre, LaMama ETC, and The Joseph Papp Public Theatre.

Performance and Film

Mitler has been a stand-up comic, a mime, a celebrity impersonator, a voice artist, and a therapist. He appeared on numerous television programs and starred in over a dozen Grade Z motion pictures in the 80s before creating his own film projects. His first film feature, Cracking Up, (producer, director, writer, editor and actor), garnered a number of awards; including Best Film in The Venice International Film Festival Critic’s Week and the People’s Choice Award in The New York Underground Film Festival.

Selected works

Select Publications

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Improvisational theatre</span> Theatrical genre featuring unscripted performance

Improvisational theatre, often called improvisation or improv, is the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted, created spontaneously by the performers. In its purest form, the dialogue, action, story, and characters are created collaboratively by the players as the improvisation unfolds in present time, without use of an already prepared, written script.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sean Gullette</span> American actor

Sean Leland Sebastian Gullette is an American film director, writer, screenwriter, actor, and producer.

Psychodrama is an action method, often used as a psychotherapy, in which clients use spontaneous dramatization, role playing, and dramatic self-presentation to investigate and gain insight into their lives. Developed by Jacob L. Moreno and his wife Zerka Toeman Moreno, psychodrama includes elements of theater, often conducted on a stage, or a space that serves as a stage area, where props can be used. A psychodrama therapy group, under the direction of a licensed psychodramatist, reenacts real-life, past situations, acting them out in present time. Participants then have the opportunity to evaluate their behavior, reflect on how the past incident is getting played out in the present and more deeply understand particular situations in their lives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johannes Grenzfurthner</span> Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

Johannes Grenzfurthner is an Austrian artist, filmmaker, writer, actor, curator, theatre director, performer and lecturer. Grenzfurthner is the founder, conceiver and artistic director of monochrom, an international art and theory group and film production company. Most of his artworks are labeled monochrom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Napier Robertson</span> New Zealand writer, actor, film director and producer

James William Napier Robertson is a New Zealand writer, film director, actor and producer, who wrote and directed 2009 film I'm Not Harry Jenson, and 2014 film The Dark Horse, for which he won Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Film at the 2014 New Zealand Film Awards, and which was declared by New Zealand critics "One of the greatest New Zealand films ever made".

Elizabeth Ann Crowther is an English theatre actress. Her father was the actor, comedian and presenter Leslie Crowther and her mother was Jean Crowther, actress and dancer.

John Rowan was an English author, counsellor, psychotherapist and clinical supervisor, known for being one of the pioneers of humanistic psychology and integrative psychotherapy. He worked in exploring transpersonal psychology, and wrote about the concept of subpersonality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian Iqbal Rashid</span> British film director and poet

Ian Iqbal Rashid is a poet, screenwriter and filmmaker known in particular for his volumes of poetry, for the TV series Sort Of and This Life and the feature films Touch of Pink and How She Move.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matt Ross (actor)</span> American actor (born 1970)

Matthew Brandon Ross is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as Gavin Belson in the HBO series Silicon Valley, Glenn Odekirk in The Aviator, and Luis Carruthers in American Psycho.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irvin D. Yalom</span> American existential psychiatrist (born 1931)

Irvin David Yalom is an American existential psychiatrist who is an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, as well as author of both fiction and nonfiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Emerson (filmmaker)</span> American film director

John Emerson was an American stage actor, playwright, producer, and director of silent films. Emerson was married to Anita Loos from June 15, 1919, until his death, and prior to that the couple had worked together as a writing team for motion pictures. They would continue to be credited jointly, even as Loos pursued independent projects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jay Wade Edwards</span> American film director and editor

Jay Wade Edwards is an American film director, television producer and editor.

Elizabeth Searle is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright and screenwriter. She is the author of five books of fiction and a rock opera, and she is co-writer of "I'll Show You Mine," a feature film from Duplass Brothers Productions and that was released by Gravitas Ventures in 2023 in select theaters in NYC, LA and more and widely via VOD on AmazonPrime, AppleTV, Comcast OnDemand, Vudu and more. The film which Elizabeth co-wrote with David Shields and Tiffany Louquet, is directed by Megan Griffiths and stars Poorna Jagannathan and Casey Thomas Brown. It received positive reviews in the New York Times and more, as well as national media coverage in VARIETY and more. Elizabeth has several other film projects in development. Her theater work TONYA & NANCY: THE ROCK OPERA has been performed around the country. Both I'LL SHOW YOU MINE and TONYA & NANCY: THE ROCK OPERA have received national media attention.

Jeremy Craig Kasten is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and editor. Kasten is best known for his arthouse horror pieces, which range from psychological horror films such as The Attic Expeditions (2001) and The Dead Ones (2010) to Grand Guignol, such as his re-imagining of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s classic splatter film The Wizard of Gore (2007) and his contribution to the horror anthology film The Theatre Bizarre (2011). Other work includes the zombie film All Soul’s Day: Dia de los Muertos (2005) and the drug-fueled vampire film The Thirst (2006).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">51st Venice International Film Festival</span>

The 51st annual Venice International Film Festival was held on 1 September to 12 September, 1994.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jason V. Brock</span> American writer, artist, filmmaker, musician

Jason Vincent Brock is an American author, artist, editor and filmmaker.

Daniel Joseph Tomasulo is an American counseling psychologist, writer, and professor and the Academic Director and core faculty at the Spirituality Mind Body Institute (SMBI), Teachers College, Columbia University. He holds a Ph.D. in psychology, MFA in writing, and a Master of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, and was formerly the Director of the New York City Certification in Positive Psychology for the New York Open Center. He is also a Review Editor for Frontiers in Psychology's special section on Positive Psychology and recipient of the Teachers College, Columbia University 2021 Teaching Award.

<i>Into the Dark</i> (TV series) American horror anthology series

Into the Dark is an American horror anthology television series produced for Hulu, with each stand-alone episodic installment based around a different holiday. The first season premiered on October 5, 2018, and consists of twelve feature-length episodes of television films. Into the Dark was renewed for a second season, which premiered on October 4, 2019, and also consists of twelve episodes.

<i>Thane of East County</i> 2015 film by Jesse Keller

Thane of East County, also known as Blood Will Have Blood, is a 2015 black and white horror drama film written and directed by Jesse Keller in his feature film debut and is adapted from William Shakespeare's play Macbeth. The film won Best Drama at Poppy Jasper International Film Festival and stars Carr Cavender, Molly Beucher, Connor Sullivan and Karl Backus.