Genesee Spridco is a Wisconsin born and raised producer, actor, designer and educator of theatre arts who has worked nationally and internationally. She started in theatre very young acting and working in technical roles in community and pre-professional theatres around Madison including CTM Theatre and School, Middleton Players, Madison Area Technical College, First Banana Productions, Madison Theatre Guild and Madison Opera. Genesee trained at Viterbo University in LaCrosse where she got her BFA in Directing and BS in Theatre Education. She went out to California where she got her MFA in Ensemble Devised Physical Theatre from Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre. She now teaches mask and movement for the BFA and MFA acting programs at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Genesee is continuing her training to teach Alexander Technique and Yoga. 

 

She is an advocate for actors creating their own works and bringing marginalized voices to the space of the stage. She currently serves as Co-Vice Chair of the National Playwriting Program and Head of the Devised Theatre Initiative for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival for Region 3. She created and served as Founding Artistic Director for Chicago-based Suitcase Shakespeare Company who created 60 minute adaptations of the bard’s works. Genesee adapted three productions and directed five in her four years. She also currently helps lead a circus theatre ensemble called Imaginez that creates original theatre productions and spectacle based event entertainment featuring fire performance, aerial arts, mask work, contortion and more.  Her most recent adaptation of The Tempest called Miranda: One Woman’s Tempest is performed with two actors using aerial silks, masks, shadow and dance and debuted at the Kansas City Fringe Festival. 

 

Recent production credits include: Imaginez’s Take Flight: An Adventure in Cirque (co-creator, Fink), Lyric at Illinois’s The Adventure of Little Sharp Ears (Movement Director for Opera), Racine Theatre Guild’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (Mask Designer), Illinois Theatre’s Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (Movement Director), She also has performed at renaissance festivals in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Oregon, North Carolina, and Texas with the award winning vaudevillian comedy show ‘The Washing Well Wenches’.