Monika Gross is a director, writer, and performer. She grew up in Chapel Hill NC and holds a BFA in Drama from the UNC School of the Arts. She is a member of Actors Equity Association, the Dramatists Guild, an Associate Member of Stage Directors & Choreographers, as well as an original member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, New York Theater Workshop's Usual Suspects, and The Women's Project Theater Directors Lab. She worked intensively with Open Theater director Joseph Chaikin in the early 1980’s, trained with Ariane Mnouchkine and le Theatre du Soleil in Paris, and with Robert Langdon Lloyd of Peter Brooks company for two years as a member of his Shakespeare Event workshop at La Mama in NYC. She also trains and performs in Butoh dance.
Monika is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique since 1985 and a Teaching Member of Alexander Technique International and served on the faculty of the Hayes School of Music at Appalachian State University from 2011-12. In NYC, Monika was Artistic Director of Theatreworkers (1982-90), directing many original productions, and of Smarty Pants Theatre (1990-2001), where she directed and performed in her own plays and adaptations.
She is currently Artistic Director of At-A-Site Theater, creating theater in unusual spaces and in familiar spaces in unusual ways, arranging theater and audiences to meet unexpectedly. She is Executive Director of The Poise Project, a nonprofit that brings Alexander technique based programs to people living with chronic conditions, family care partners, and children and youth.
She curated and performed in At-A-Site’s PHASE ONE of Celebrating the Birthdays of Dead Writers, a daily street performance in Asheville and in New York City during Summer 2014, where short selections from the works of dead writers on their birthdays are offered to be read to random passersby. The project was also done in Asheville, NYC and Ireland in Summer 2015, with onsite performances in Dublin, Westport, Limerick and Galway.
Reading a Denise Levertov at Black Mountain College Museum+Arts Center, September 26, 2014 Photo by Ken FitchMonika will play the poet Denise Levertov in the At-A-Site Theater project We reaving: the torn cloth A theatrical COMPOSITION BY FIELD of the co-respondence between/ denise levertov + RD
Monika is the recipient of the 2016 NC Artist Fellowship in Playwriting.
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Alexander Technique