here Michael Morgan
Michael’s acting career has been characterized by plays that have controversial social issues at their centers; this tendency also embraces his deep interest in the classics, which he believes can be applied to contemporary issues and co-opted by marginalized people to retell their stories. Sensing his dual calling, Michael has pursued a career as a voice teacher while working as an actor.
For the last seven years, Michael had been passionately focused on “The Odyssey Project.” He spearheaded this project to create a collaborative model for incarcerated teens, and it has become the crowning accomplishment of his artistic career.
Michael designed “The Odyssey Project” as a multi-cultural experiment that brings together contemporary youth culture with a literary pinnacle of Western civilization. As an exploratory project, it examines this intersection in order to determine how the themes of “The Odyssey” serve as a prompt to liberate socially marginalized voices. The participants progress from interpretation to ownership and authorship as they evolve in the process to a point where they are able to re-write “The Odyssey” in their own words.
watch Michael Morgan University of California Santa Barbara, Dept. of Theater and Dance
Santa Barbara, CA 93106