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Dana Wieluns Legawiec (pronounced “Luh-GAHV-yetz”) is a professional Theatre Artist, Teaching Artist and Arts Educator who specializes in Physical Theatre.
As a community-based Teaching Artist, Dana uses physical theatre to empower and elevate the voices of the very young in rural Maine. She draws upon three decades’ experience working in ensemble theater to develop programs for children that celebrate individuality within collaboration while fostering deep connections to place. She was named a Creative Community Fellow by National Arts Strategies in recognition of her work making theatre with children in rural Maine. After witnessing the transformational potential of the elementary school play, Dana is founding The School Play Project to design and implement extracurricular creative drama programs for elementary schools in the state and region, and to research and advocate for free, high-quality participatory creative theatre-making for children.
A fixture of Los Angeles’ avant-garde theater scene in the 90s, Dana has consistently devoted her creative energies and technical abilities toward the creation of new work. Her acting career is shaped by decades-long collaborations with playwrights, directors and choreographers working within ensemble. As an actress, Dana has performed in original plays with Los Angeles’ ground-breaking Padua Playwrights Productions, including the world premieres of Murray Mednick’s Joe and Betty, Gary’s Walk and Clown Show for Bruno. She was a member of the dance-theatre ensemble Rosanna Gamson/World Wide for over a decade, performing, touring and teaching at festivals in the US and Canada. An original founding member and Co-Artistic Director of Ziggurat Theatre Ensemble, Dana has contributed to nearly every project as a performer, movement coach, choreographer, mask performance coach or assistant director since 1996. She married the playwright and director Stephen Legawiec in 2006. She is an Artistic Associate for the Bath and Camden Shakespeare Festivals. Dana leads physical theatre training and movement design for Ziggurat and the Shakespeare Festivals.
Since moving to Maine with her family in 2010, she has performed with her own companies, as well as with Celebration Barn Theater, Heartwood Theater Company, Figures of Speech Theater, the Holocaust and Human Rights Center, Mad Horse Theater Company, the Theater Project and Portland Stage’s Play Me A Story Program.
Her company Ziggurat Theatre Ensemble continues to garner critical acclaim for its highly stylized, visually stunning works of physical theatre, recently reviving its signature performance Ninshaba for the Season of Unusual Theatre in Trois Riviere, Canada.
Dana leads workshops in Physical Theatre, Mask and Ensemble for students of all ages, and has worked as an Artist in Residence through the Building Community through the Arts program with the Maine Alliance for Arts Education. In 2017 she was selected as a Teaching Artist Leader for the Maine Arts Leadership Institute (MALI) and is a member of MALI's Vision Team for 2019-2020.
Dana received her BA in English Literature and a Certificate in Theatre & Dance from Princeton University; is a graduate of the Physical Theatre Training Program at Dell’Arte International; and completed her Master's in Education, Arts in Education, at Harvard. She is currently engaged in a certification program in Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process.