Hi there, my name is Miranda. I'm a film and theatre maker currently living in the Philadelphia area after living in New York City for 12 years.  I'd like to settle in for a cup of chamomile tea and tell you my story. It's an exciting time with twists and turns, plans changed, adventures had, and lessons learned.  And it's made me into the professional woman I am today. 

     When I was a little girl, all I wanted to become was a performer.  My parents are both in the arts.  Mom is a dancer, musical theatre performer, and choreographer.  Dad is an Equity stage manager, casting director, and artistic director.  Growing up, being on the front rows of shows with my two younger brothers was the norm for me.  The three of us would recreate mom's and dad's shows in the living room (eventually creating our own), and other cast and crew members were regular babysitters. Because our parents had the performer's schedule, our parents also homeschooled us.

     In 1996, my parents moved us to Southern Utah for a show called "Utah the Peacemaker Saga" at the Tuacahn Amphitheatre where both of my parents had gotten hired. At 6 years old, I got to be in the show which was my first performance in an Equity production.  After the show's run, my parents opened a performing arts school called Diamond Talent Productions which has since produced several Broadway performers (Hamilton, Sweeney Todd, Back to the Future the Musical, Mean Girls, Kinky Boots), many more professional theatre performers & filmmakers, and a Radio City Rockette.  
     I grew up at Diamond taking ballet, jazz, tap, musical theatre & vocal performance, as well as summer acting workshops.  When I was 14, I was first introduced to performing Shakespeare and I fell in love with it.  That's when I knew I wanted to be an actress.  

    Growing up homeschooled and surrounded by the arts, I was unbelievably imaginative.  I created my own stories, plays, dances, home-movie films, skits, and animation voice edits; I learned how to frame a camera, how to edit video and media on Windows Movie Maker, and how to choreograph a dance. My parents encouraged me to work hard on my stories and exposed me to many films and musicals that would inspire my young creative mind. 
   
    I taught myself so many skills like filmmaking and writing just to be able to create the stories I saw in my head, but I always thought that performing would be what would get me the farthest down the career path that I saw in my dreams.  My career dreams included becoming an EGOT winner, winning a lifetime achievement award, opening my own charities for children's literacy, and living in a castle of my own design complete with secret passages and a rose garden and built in Scotland.  With all of these ambitions, by the age of 18, I was beyond ready to get started and move to New York.  I had dreamed about it my whole life.  So in 2009, I moved to New York ready for all of the opportunities to come flying my way. 

 

     I attended Pace University and graduated in 2013 with a BA in Acting and had an incredible studying abroad experience at Regent's University in London where I studied filmmaking.  I learned many, many lessons over those first few years. Life is not as easy as it was in the movies and books I grew up admiring.  But I remained optimistic.  

     After college, I spent several years working the grind, performing in several fun independent theatre works and short films like Romeo and Juliet on the streets of New York and a play about Christmas Town after it was hit with an apocalypse.  These felt like experiment years for me.  They taught me a lot about myself and who I really wanted to be.  

     Over time I got tired. I spent all of my time working myself to the bone in what an actor's life is "supposed" to look like: 60-hour work weeks in restaurants, catering companies, museum guide jobs, nannying for families, cleaning apartments, and any other sort of job you can think a mid-twenties artist would do.  I was faced with the harsh reality of truly living in New York City. And I was slowly dying inside. 

    Finally, in 2017,  I recovered a script that I had written in 2011 for a college screenwriting class at Regents.  It was a short film called "Innocence".  I hadn't acted in something that felt worthwhile in over 2 years, and here was an opportunity I could make for myself.  I worked on a rewrite, contacted a director friend of mine, and went into production.  A year later, "Innocence" won Best Short Film at the International Filmmaker's Festival of NY and Best Indie Film (March 2018) at the Top Shorts Online Film Festival among other accolades.  
     After "Innocence", I spent the next few years continuing to write and develop some first drafts of a feature film "Writing Theo" which reached the Semi-Finalist round of Screencraft's Screenwriting Fellowship.  I was preparing the film for production in mid-2020.  

    Then, during the pandemic when I felt like my new life as a professional filmmaker was screeching to a halt just after it had begun, I was hired by my parents' studio Diamond Talent to be their video editor and film advisor while they made performance adjustments for the pandemic.  I  kept myself busy teaching myself Adobe Premiere Pro while editing videos of pre-recorded students singing on a stage projection screen while they danced live and masked.  

    At the beginning of 2021, I saw a Facebook post from a friend of mine looking for a video editor.  I responded and was hired by The 24 Hour Plays in NYC which creates 6 short plays in under 24 hours.  In November of 2021, I became their Lead Editor and Post Producer for their Viral Monologues online program, and in November of 2022, I was working my first live gig since 2020 in my Broadway Debut as a Video Designer for The 24 Hour Plays on Broadway at Town Hall in NYC!

    I moved to Philadelphia in late 2021 to start fresh post-pandemic.  Soon after, I was approached by film director William Rush (Original CINematic) to edit four of his horror and psychological thriller films for production in 2022 & 2023 including a short called "One For the Road" based on a short story by Steven King.  Original CINematic also hired me as the lead Actress for the third of these films "Immersion" which also became my first feature film as an actress.

     Before I left New York City, I fell in love with a story enthusiast who encourages me every day to live confidently in my fantasy world.  I'm also a gardener.  I love to bake, knit, paint, hike, and visit the archery range with my recurve bow.  I'm learning French and sign language.  I still love fairytales and adventure stories, as well as autobiographies and documentaries.  I still want that castle with secret passages and a rose garden.  Though I'm happy to have it in Pennsylvania someday rather than in the highlands of Scotland.  After all of that struggle and facing reality for the better part of my young adult life, I woke up one morning and my life had changed completely... and no, it's not what I was expecting, but magic casts its spells in mysterious ways.