Speaker offers advice for aspiring actors

  Wednesday, September 17, 2014 2:00 AM
  News

Pittsburg, KS

Lots of people dream of making it big in on the stage or the big screen. A professional actor and theater educator will share her thoughts on an actor’s life and what it takes to break into the profession in a lecture at Pittsburg State University on Friday, Sept. 19.

Lucy Miller-Downing will present “Want to be an actor??? – Get Real!” at 3 p.m. in the PSU Studio Theatre in Grubbs Hall. The lecture, sponsored by the Department of Communication and Pitt State Theatre is free and open to the public.

Miller-Downing earned her bachelor’s degree in communication with an emphasis in theater and a minor in creative writing from PSU in 2008. Since then, she has performed professionally in Austin, Texas, most notably with the Crank Collective theater company.

Miller-Downing has worked with the company’s casting directors to cast several of Austin’s main stage professional productions. She has also worked as a professional teaching artist for various organizations, including the Theatre Action Project, where she facilitated Theatre of the Oppressed workshops for elementary school children and oversaw the creation of collaborative murals in an elementary school.

In 2013, Miller-Downing co-founded the Austin Children’s Alliance of the Arts (ACAA), a non-profit dedicated to promoting arts education in early childhood. Currently, she works for the Dougherty Arts Center as a culture and arts education specialist. Her duties include overseeing the fine arts preschool program and developing, directing and touring the award winning ARTSreach theater company. ARTSreach is a storybook theater troupe that promotes literacy through live adaptations of children's stories. The troupe reachs thousands of children each season.

Miller-Downing lives with her husband and two children in Austin.