As an international director, actor and singer, Marjorie Hayes has created performances that engage and excite audiences in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Ms. Hayes was awarded an Artslink Grant in 2005 to direct a site-specific production of Brecht/Weill's socio-political musical Happy End for Teatr Wybrzeze, one of Poland's professional state theatres. It was staged at the Gdansk shipyard, the exact factory where the Solidarity movement started, and her production employed out-of-work shipyard workers as chorus. Later, her co-translation of Happy End was produced and ran for a year at the Polish National Theatre and subsequently received another production at the Theatre of the Baltic. Her production of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost in Czech Republic was nominated for Best Theatre Production of 1999 in the major Czech theatre journal Divadelni Noviny and chosen to be included in the Shakespeare Centre Millennium Link Project Archive. In 1998, Ms. Hayes was awarded a United States Senior Fulbright Fellowship to Poland, where she had been a journeyman actor at Jerzy Grotowski's Polish Theatre Laboratory for several years. This time she directed Edward Albee's Three Tall Women at Teatr Wspolczesny. In Seoul, Korea, she recently completed pre-production for her production of Killer Joe with Ka Byun Theatre.
In the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, Ms. Hayes' production of The Food Chain at the Circle Theatre was chosen as one of the "Top Ten Productions of 2000″ by the Dallas Morning News. In 1995, she was the recipient of the Austin Circle of Critics Award for Best Director-Drama for Fuente Ovejuna. She directed My Sister in This House for Wingspan Theatre, which was cited by two reviewers at one of the top productions of 2009. She was cited by Alexandra Bonifield, Criticalrant.com, as one of six directors in the DFW area to celebrate.
As an actress, Hayes has worked Off-Broadway, in regional theatres, film and commercials. Her films include the award-winning Topeka, and a leading role in Uncertain, TX which premiered at the Austin Film Festival in 2011. In the DFW area she has especially enjoyed performing in Buried Child at Kitchen Dog Theater, the title role in Always, Patsy Cline and Aunt Eller in Oklahoma! for Casa Manana at Bass Hall.
As a concert artist, she has performed in Poland at the Non-Stop Festival and toured "Finding Home" to many venues including the WROSTJA Festival of One-Actor and the famous dissident club Piwnica pod Baranami. She has been a lead soloist in five "Story Songs" benefit concerts directed by Theatre Hall of Fame Honoree and Tony Award winner Betty Buckley. Her highly acclaimed cabaret set "Taking Chances," has played in LA, DFW and New York City.
Ms. Hayes is the Co-Managing Director of Theatre Production and an associate professor of acting and directing at the University of North Texas. Additionally, she serves as the Administrator for Betty Buckley's Workshops in Fort Worth. She received her BFA in Acting from California Institute of the Arts and her MFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon University. She is a member of the performing artists unions: Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, AEA, and SAG-AFTRA.
