Lace Mill artist-resident Zelda (aka Judith Z. Miller) received an Individual Artist Commission from Arts Mid-Hudson last month. The $2,500 grant supports the development of her one-person show, “Que Será, Será (Whatever Will Be, Will Be).” This humorous, sobering, hopeful multimedia one-person revelatory performance chronicles Zelda’s story of the joys and challenges navigating non-binary Queerness from childhood during the 1950s to adulthood.
“I worked my ass off on that grant and I got it! ” notes Zelda. “Of course, now reality is setting in. In addition to creating the show, I also promote it and get advertisers for the programs. In order to manifest this piece of theater, I’m raising additional funds through a crowdfunding campaign, which I hope my friends, fans, and people interested in supporting a Queer project, will support. If everyone I know gives a small amount of money and a few give something substantial, this can happen.”
Zelda (aka Judith Z. Miller) is a multifaceted artist who lives in an erotic, musical, spiritual universe. As a feminist Jew who studies shamanism, she is inspired by the beauty of nature and the guiding force of her intuition as she explores the themes of connection to the Earth, spirituality, sexuality, and gender. She sculpts, draws, writes, performs, photographs, and is an ecstatic dancer/percussionist/healer. Zelda co-founded The Fine Line Actors Theatre in Washington DC and performed at such venues as Source, GALA Hispanic Theatre and the Kennedy Center in DC, in NYC at WOW Café Theatre and Dixon Place, at The Lace Mill and with the TMI Project in Kingston. Zelda also produces ZELDA’S Happenings, a series of black-light, body-painting, percussion dance parties that will produce original wearable art for a new UpState Artists Clothing Collection. She published in Inside Arts magazine, The Washington Post, and American Theatre magazine. Zelda currently resides at The Lace Mill in Kingston, NY with her Great Dane “Z.”
Arts Mid-Hudson extended a record number of Individual Artist Commissions grants, thanks to the 2019 Decentralization Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and administered by Arts Mid-Hudson. This grant program supports the creation of new work by an individual artist, which involves the community in their process or includes a public showing of their work. Zelda is one of 10 artists from Ulster, Dutchess and Orange Counties from a competitive field of 40 applicants.
Find out more about Zelda and her performance schedule, follow her on social media:
Que Será, Será on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TalkaboutQueerness/
Zelda’s Happenings on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zeldashappenings/
Artist Page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArtistSoulSpeaks/