Biography
Michele Shay — actress, director, educator, and noted interpreter of the works of playwright August Wilson — is perhaps best known for her Tony Award-nominated performance as Louise in August Wilson’s Seven Guitars. She is a veteran actress who has graced stages on and off-Broadway, television and film, and regional theatres across the country.
Shay has portrayed Aunt Ester in Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean in productions directed by Kenny Leon, Phylicia Rashad and Ruben Santiago-Hudson; and Mame Wilks in the world premiere of Wilson’s Radio Golf, directed by Timothy Douglas at Yale Rep. In 2008, she joined more than 30 actors in the Kennedy Center’s August Wilson’s 20th Century, where all 10 of Wilson’s plays were performed in repertory order of their decade.
Other stage work includes Mama in Stew (Cincinnati Playhouse), Home by Samm Art Williams, and for colored girls… by Ntozake Shange (Broadway), Coriolanus with Morgan Freeman, Titania in James Lapine’s Midsummer Night’s Dream opposite William Hurt (Shakespeare in the Park), and Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare and Company). She earned an Obie Award for her work in Meetings by Mustapha Matura. Films and television credits include One True Thing with Meryl Streep and He Got Game with Denzel Washington, as well as Henrietta Morgan on NBC’s Another World.
Shay has directed several August Wilson plays, including Two Trains Running, King Hedley II, Fences, Gem of the Ocean, Seven Guitars, The Piano Lesson, and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Her 2023 SDA Production of King Hedley II, featuring MFA Students, was presented at the International Black Theater Festival in North Carolina in 2024. In 2013, she participated with a host of other longtime August Wilson collaborators in The Greene Space’s reading and recording series of August Wilson’s American Century Cycle. She directed a reading of Two Trains Running, featuring Anthony Chisholm and Tracie Thoms. Other directorial work includes Skelton Crew, Echoes of Usth; Seize the King, one-woman shows Fighting for the Title by Delores Burgess and Everyday Diva by Elisa Perry; and Trey Anthony’s da kink in my hair, which ran in New York, Toronto, and the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, NC.
A Carnegie Mellon University graduate, Shay is a Fox Grant recipient — researching the connection between the human energy system, healing, and performance. She has taught courses at California Institute of the Arts, American Conservatory Theater, Actors Theater of Louisville, Denver Center, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and the New Studio on Broadway at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. She is a member of the Actors Center Workshop Company and the National Alliance of Acting Teachers, both founded by J. Michael Miller in New York City. Shay has served on theatre panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, NY and NJ State Arts Councils, Board of TCG, and the game-changing funding organization for sustaining Black Theaters created by Dr Indira Etwaroo, the Black Seed. She has served as an Acting coach on the upcoming film Children of Blood and Bone, The Woman King, and the television series Swagger, created by Reggie Bythewood for Apple TV.