"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how.  The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.  The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark."

  Agnes de Mille
American dancer and choreographer

Works

The Women of The Hat...a duet for one - Hollywood Fringe Festival 2015 - June 21, 22, 25, 26 @7pm Theatre of Note

The Hat - New York International Fringe Festival - 2013

Asylum - Company Creation Festival - Son of Semele Ensemble - 2013

The Women of "The Hat" - Solo Creation Festival - Son of Semele Ensemble - 2014

Reviews...



The Women of "The Hat" -- Solo Creation Festival --July 18, 2014
Mark Hein for Theatre Ghost
You may not remember Semele.  She was a mortal woman Zeus impregnated and later killed with a lightning bolt.  Their child survived — to become Dionysos, god of wine, of theatre, and of all forms of ecstasy.  He was known for inviting his women followers into a divine, dangerous madness.
Son of Semele, a local troupe named for their ancient patron, has asked three women to step into the wild — alone — this weekend.   These intrepid “daughters of Semele” do so, and each one finds some fine and fearful things.
The first is Melissa R. Randel, in The Women of “The Hat”.  On a black stage are a clothes rack (occupied), a wingback chair (empty), and a small bandbox table and stool.  Out strides a dancer in rehearsal tights, who grabs a top hat from the rack and narrates us through the opening few moves of Chorus Line.
Before her Broadway memories can unwind, she shifts costume and becomes — her own mother.  A Southern girl who was given dance lessons to teach her posture, but fell in love with the art.  Who began her career dancing to a hotel jazz band, but fell in love with the  trombone player.
Randel moves us steadily through two lives shaped around a missing man.   Mother forms hers around his retreat from marriage into music, drinking and at last illness; daughter’s is formed by his distance, then his death.  Randel creates quiet alarm in us as she sips  from smaller and smaller teacups, and shocks us when each woman tries to dance a duet with the empty chair.
The trip through the past leads to a triumph both lives have earned, as the daughter flings herself joyfully into space in Chorus Line‘s choreography.  Elegant and poignant, Randel’s piece — edited deftly from a two-hander to this more powerful solo — takes us deep into the life of passion found, fettered and finally freed.

The Hat -- NY International Fringe Festival
nytheatre.com review by Martin Denton
August 15, 2013

The Hat referred to in the title of this one-act play by Melissa R. Randel is the sparkling gold topper she wore and danced with in the musical A Chorus Line. At the very beginning of The Hat, Randel executes the now-iconic choreography that Michael Bennett created for his actors and their hats, describing the steps as she seamlessly moves through them until she triumphantly cocks her head back—as she puts it, "left cheek to God."


In development...

...a new work in progress... - Photo by Monica De Leon

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