Teaching Areas: Acting, Scene Study, Audition Preparation
Production Areas: Actor
Courses: Introduction to Acting, Advanced Scene Study, Audition Coaching
office - 201 Performing Arts Building
phone - (540) 231-1115
e-mail - michaelanthonywilliams@vt.edu
Michael Anthony Williams is ecstatic to be joining the faculty at Virginia Tech. Michael attended Beloit College from 1978-1982, with majors in Theater and Sociology. Professional associations include The Screen Actors Guild, the Association of Television and Radio Artists, the Actors Equity Association, and the American Screenwriter's Association. Michael has studied theater under the watchful eye of Del Close, Keith Johnstone, Martin Harvey Friedburg, and Joy Vandervort-Cobb. Dialect training by Gillian Lane Plescia and Betty Ann Leesburg-Lange. Acting for Film training with Jane Brody and Rachel Patterson. Michael is a former member of the Second City Theater Company, and has been nominated multiple times for the Joseph Jefferson award (Chicago) and the Helen Hayes award (Washington, DC).
Regional theater credits include Jitney and To Kill A Mockingbird at Ford's Theater; Of Mice and Men at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and The Repertory Theater of St. Louis; Starving at Woolly Mammoth Theater; Jesus Hopped the A Train at Roundhouse Theater; Venus and Omnium Gatherum at The Olney Theater Center; Nomathemba with Ladysmith Black Mambazo at Steppenwolf Theater, Crossroads Theater and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; The Second City Theater; Master Harold and the Boys at Studio Theater; Fences and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom at the Swine Palace Theater; The Colored Museum at Victory Gardens Theater; East Texas Hot Links for the Onyx Theatre Ensemble; The Bluest Eye at Theater Alliance, Two Trains Running for the African Continuum Theater Company at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Joe Turner's Come and Gone at the Haymarket Theatre at Virginia Tech. Television credits include “The Wire” for HBO, “FBI Files” for the Discovery Channel, and “Homicide: Life on the Streets” for NBC. Feature film credits include “Losing Isaiah,” “The Replacements,” “Contact,” “Unbreakable,” and the soon to be released “The Brave One.” Michael has worked with the following feature film directors: Neil Jordan, M. Night Shyamalan, Howie Duetch, Jonathan Demme, Steve Guyllenhal, Uli Edel, and Clement Virgo. Michael is the creator and founder of “Improv Affect,” an improvisation-based theater initiative targeting urban youth, empowering them to find their voice and express themselves through theater.