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JOAN SCHIRLE is a theatre-maker-- playwright, actor, director, deviser and teacher. Joan is founding artistic director of Dell'Arte International (DAI), the ensemble acclaimed for collaborative creation and global touring since 1977. As director of the DAI School of Physical Theatre from 2001 – 2011, she designed its 3-year NAST-accredited MFA in Ensemble-Based Physical Theatre. A senior teacher of the FM Alexander Technique, physical acting, voice & movement, Joan has taught in MFA programs at Yale, UCSD, U. Missouri Kansas City, and the Beijing Dance Academy, as well as for the artists of Cirque du Soleil; she leads annual study trips to Bali. Her acting work was recognized with a 2006 Fox Foundation/TCG Resident Actor Fellowship. In 2004 she was honored at the 16th Cairo International Experimental Theatre Festival as a leader in the field of experimental theatre. She has directed productions at San Diego Rep, the Alley, Bloomsburg Ensemble, A Traveling Jewish Theatre, Touchstone Ensemble, Colorado University and Dell’Arte International (DAI). She has performed with DAI, Yale Rep, the California Shakespeare Festival, San Diego Rep; her solo mask show, Second Skin, has been seen in many US and international cities. Recent activity: ATME Lifetime Achievement Award 2018. Plenary speaker at 11th International Alexander Technique Congress, 2018. March 2018 writing residency at the Morris Graves Foundation in Loleta, CA to work on a new play/opera about Graves. In 2016-2017 she travelled to Denmark to collaborate with Danish sculptor Marit Benthe Norheim, whose Life-boats project (www.life-boats.com) launched at the international AARHUS2017 festival. An Orchard Project Residency in 2017 further developed Joan’s “Global Human Warming” project to accompany the Life- boats in 2019-20. The film of Mary Jane, The Musical, in which she stars as Mary Jane, releases in video-on-demand, April, 2018. http://www.maryjanemusical.com/ In 2017 she directed Women of the Northwest at Arcata Playhouse. Her play, The Big Thirst, premiered at the 2016 Mad River Festival. She joined commedia masters Antonio Fava and Carlo Boso as a featured presenter at the 2013 conference in Windsor, Ontario, “Crossing Boundaries: Commedia dell’Arte Across Gender, Genre & Geography.” Her writing appears in publications on devising (Theatre Topics 2006), Commedia dell’Arte (Routledge 2014), Movement For Actors (Allworth Press 2002, 2016), Physical Dramaturgy (Routledge 2018). She is a video contributor to TCG’s “I Am Theatre” 50th anniversary series. Member: ATME, AEA, VASTA, , Network of Ensemble Theatres, and TCG.