The musical worlds of michelle j. rodriguez, aka
Micha
Links to videos + interviews with Michelle here!
Next up: composing the score for and performing in Migguel Anggelo’s dance-theater piece JOY at Lincoln Center’s Festival of Firsts, October 25th
Début world premiere: PRESENCIA (writer, actor, producer) at the Bushwick Starr, May/June 2024. Check out Jesse Cameron Alick’s profiles of the 2023-2024 Season Artists.
Michelle J. “Micha” Rodriguez (she/her) writes and performs in the worlds of music and theater. Raised in the Pacific Northwest and Kentucky by Puerto Rican parents, Michelle’s work explores kids-of-immigrants stories, divinity, queerness, intuition, joy-as-resistance, healing and spaces in-between. Michelle is the winner of the 2022 Helen Merrill Award for playwriting and received a grant from NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theater.
Musicals in development include PRESENCIA (composer/lyricist/bookwriter/performer), which was most recently developed with a residency at BAM and a concert at Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City, HOMBRES (composer/lyricist) at Portland Center Stage with William Carlos Angulo and Isaac Gómez, RAIMUNDA (composer/lyricist) with Noelle Viñas, which was developed through Ars Nova’s Van Lier Fellowship and Maker’s Lab and at NYSAF, JIRAN (composer/lyricist/co-writer) with Sivan Battat (Mercury Store) and LIVES IN LIMBO (lyricist) based on the book by Ricardo González. Her music project MICHA became a finalist for NPR’s 2018 Tiny Desk Contest with her song “Nena Nena Nena,” praised for a “bilingual set spanning laid-back southern soul and Latin pop flare” (NPR). Micha lives in Brooklyn, NY and when she isn’t writing music she enjoys surfing, reading and designing objects.
With a voice that is “clear and compelling” and a sound that features “flourishes of bolero, bossa nova and even jazz” (Chicago Tribune), Ms. Rodriguez captivates as a performer with her vulnerability onstage. Known for her concert works, she has presented VISIONS at Joe’s Pub, J. Lo at the Dance Call at Ars Nova, East o’ West o’! at Ars Nova and Steppenwolf and given concerts at Lincoln Center, Signature Theater, Rattlestick Theater and elsewhere. Rodriguez made her Public Theater début composing the music for The Mobile Unit’s production of The Tempest directed by Laurie Woolery and subsequently toured MICHA MÚSICA: In Transit (Mobile Unit/Joe’s Pub). Rodriguez was an Artist in Residence at the Lexington Theater Company in Lexington, KY and has received support from New York Theater Workshop, The Public Theater, the Sundance Institute, SPACE on Ryder Farm, The Sol Project, Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, Salonathon and the University of Chicago.
Theatre performance credits include Uncovering Downtown by Mona Mansour and Jessica Holt (En Garde Arts), The Conversationalists by Jerome Ellis and James Harrison Monaco (Bushwick Starr; “gorgeously sung” -NYT), The Fly Honey Show (The Inconvenience), La Havana Madrid (lead role u/s, Teatro Vista/Steppenwolf/Goodman Theater) (ALTA Award for Music Direction for Goodman run), Ava in East o’, West o’! (Ars Nova), and early iterations of Hundred Days by The Bengsons.
Michelle has kept up a rigorous international teaching artist practice, spending two years teaching music, theater and art at the Monteverde Friends School in Monteverde, Costa Rica and visiting King's Academy in Madaba, Jordan twice as an artist in residence. In the United States she has worked fostering creativity and teaching songwriting and musical theater songwriting in Vermont public schools, the Chicago Public Libraries, Greenwich House Music School and the Bushwick Starr in New York, Musical Theater Factory’s Musical Theater Institute and through various residencies throughout the country.
Michelle was trained in voice as a high school student at the University of Kentucky under Dr. Noemi Lugo, is a proud public-school-trained violinist and received her BA in Theatre and Arabic Studies from Williams College. Representation: Luke Virkstis, WME. Management: Carolina Alduey, 3Arts.