What We Did Over Summer "Break": Part 2

While many of the Bloomsburg University's College of Liberal Arts students had productive summer vacations, members of the faculty also managed to keep themselves busy as well. David Miller, assistant professor of Theatre in the Department of Music, Theatre, and Dance filled his time away from the classroom by writing, producing, and directing three new plays and musicals.

courtesy of The Artful Conspirators

Sisters of the Eternal Knot is a new, original play that Miller wrote and worshopped over the course of a week with his New York City-based theater company The Artful Conspirators. The play revolves around warring nuns in Medieval France. As the leaders of abbeys Ciel Bleu and Rouge, the nuns' life-long antagonism with one another grows dangerous and the choices they make may result in the life or death of the nuns they serve.

"I don’t set out to communicate a message, per se, but when I reflect on my plays and how they reflect my values, I see that in many of my plays I am interested in the complicated role of leaders and teachers. There are good leaders and teachers and there are poor leaders and teachers. But it’s not as cut and dried as that. One of the questions I want to pose to audiences is 'What are the qualities of a good leader?' There’s something of that in this play, I think," said Miller in an interview with The Artful Conspirators.

courtesy of The New York Musical Theater Festival

Miller also directed the developmental reading of Alice Unraveled, a new rock/electronica musical about a young woman struggling to find her identity in the wake of traumatic experiences, at the New York Musical Theater Festival in July. 

Using characters from Lewis Carroll’s classic novel in a contemporary world, Alice is a teenage girl struggling with the post-traumatic stress. Alice is pulled “down the rabbit hole” and into a nightmarish world in which she cannot separate reality from memory.

courtesy of The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Festival

Rounding out his summer "break," Miller directed the premiere of In The Early Dark, a 10-minute play about a close-knit family celebrating the first snowfall of winter as part of the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Festival. The play was selected as a finalist and was one of thirty plays selected for performance selected out of more than 800 submitted.

Currently, Miller is directing the BU Player's fall production of Avenue Q which will run November 7-10. 

To see more of Miller's upcoming work, visit www.mrdavidamiller.com.