Michelle Miller

Michelle Miller’s career path has traversed the fields of theater, film, higher education, advocacy, and non-profit. She currently resides in her hometown of Kansas City.

Michelle lived in New York City for 12 years where she focused on every aspect of theater: singing, acting, producing, and directing prior to her humanitarian work taking priority. Michelle helped found Artists Striving To End Poverty (ASTEP) and is a firm believer in the power of art and artists to create positive change both in the US and abroad. For 16 years she has supported The Shanti Bhavan Children’s Project in rural India, a school for children from the Untouchable Caste, with fundraising, event planning and has made five extended trips to teach ages 4-18.

As a singer and actress, she has been seen regionally in plays and musicals, both contemporary and classical and as a headlining singer for symphonies and orchestras, such as the New Haven Symphony, The Kansas City Jazz Orchestra, as well as the Boston Pops under the batons of John Williams, Marvin Hamlisch, and Keith Lockhart. Other highlights include the National Anthem at Fenway's opening day and singing at the Vatican for Pope John Paul II.

Michelle was a founding member of Any Minute Now Productions with which she performed and produced in New York. She has performed at Lincoln Center, Off-Broadway, at The International Fringe Festival, and in her one-woman show, Their Songs, My Story. Michelle's vocal range and facility between genres has led to extensive singing and recording with up-and-coming composers. Inspired by these new voices, Michelle produced 18 concerts with and featuring such composers as Jason Robert Brown, Tom Kitt, Georgia Stitt, Kerrigan and Lowdermilk, and Cunningham & Salzman (to name of few). The concerts have included Tony winners and nominees (composers and performers alike) to highlight and promote new works as well as benefiting Artists Striving To End Poverty. In addition, lyrics from two of her own songs have been featured in the song cycle, "Adultolesence," with composer, Stephen Barnett.

Michelle's love of process and nurturing talent has led her to guest lecture at various universities and conservatories from coaching opera singers in acting for Mannes (the Music Graduate Program of the New School), Brooklyn College, and the Young Artists Graduate Program of the Lyric Opera of Kansas City in conjunction with UMKC conservatory and the University of Kansas. Michelle is thrilled to currently be teaching at the University of Kansas in their theatre & dance department.

In 2015-2016, Michelle received the Monan Professor of Theater Arts Endowed Chair to teach Musical Theater, Independent TV & Film, Art and Social Justice at her alma mater, Boston College. She has been a visiting professor there for 14 years and has directed three award-winning productions.

In 2020, Michelle graduated with her MFA in writing for stage and screen from Fairfield University where she was inducted into the Jesuit Honor Society–Alpha Sigma Nu–which honors students for their academics, leadership, and service. Michelle’s thesis was on the history of documentary theatre and her documentary play, To Welcome the Stranger, followed her friends as they reunited 130 families separated at the border.