Doreen Elizabeth Hess

Courses
Embodied Performance

Ms. Hess is an actor, playwright, director and Arts educator.

   Her acclaimed solo work has been performed around the globe: SPOILED, at SUNY Conference on Masculinities and Stage Left Studio in New York; DUST TO DUST in Bucharest, Kiel, Stockholm, Prishtina and New York at LPTW New Play Festival, New World Stages; Stage Left Studio and UN Conference on Gender Violence; LIVING OPENLY & NOTORIOUSLY, a solo trilogy - BIRTH RITE, DESCENT, AT/ONE in Berlin, Bath, Barcelona, Edinburgh, Toronto, Yerevan and Off-Broadway.

   Other acting credits include work with The New Group, Women’s Project, Irish Rep, MTC and NYTW in New York, as well as extensive regional theaters. TV credits include 5 seasons starring on Clarissa Explains It All; Law & Order; Guiding Light; All My Children and Another World. Film credits include: Handsome Harry; A Bedtime Story; Italian Lessons; Buddy & Grace and Soldier’s Heart.

   Elizabeth is currently developing several projects in tandem with her new company, The Hess Collective: SCARBERIA, ten prose/poems, is in development during residencies with TheatreLab and La MaMa. LOVE TRADE, a cross-cultural performance piece was presented as a work-in-progress at Dixon Place. Other multi-disciplinary work includes NO EVIL, a triptych of fabulist tales - PERFECT CURIOSITY, MELTDOWN, SALVAGED, developed at The O’Neill Theater Center and NYU; NOMADS, a heightened realist work, developed at The New Group and The Lark.

   Her book, ACTING & BEING: Explorations in Embodied Performance, published by Macmillan, is based on her methodology culled from teaching acting/performance/playwriting at New York University, National Theater Institute (The O’Neill), Fordham University, Sarah Lawrence College, New York Theater Intensives, New York Sumer School of the Arts, master classes and workshops internationally.

   Elizabeth is the recipient of a Madolin Cervantes Grant; ITI Armmono Festival Director’s Award; ITI Thespis Mono Festival Organizers and Audience Awards. Internationally, she was also an ACULSPEC (American Cultural Specialist) in Yerevan, Armenia where she taught master classes in playwriting and performance; participated in the ITI / UNESCO Conference in Manila, The Philippines; sat on the jury of the ITI Thespis Mono Festival in Kiel, Germany and Saint Muse Festival in Ulan Bator, Mongolia and conducted a playwriting / acting workshop in Prishtina, Kosovo, resulting in the devised work, INTERNALLY DISPLACED.