The musical worlds of michelle j. rodriguez, aka

Micha

Links to videos + interviews with Michelle here!

Michelle J. “Micha” Rodriguez (she/they) writes and performs in the worlds of music and theater. Michelle is a 2024-2025 Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence at the Bushwick Starr, a 2023-2034 Vision Resident at Ars Nova, the winner of the 2022 Helen Merrill Award for playwriting, the recipient of a 2022 grant from NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theater, and a 2020 Van Lier Fellow at Ars Nova. Raised in the Pacific Northwest and Kentucky by Puerto Rican parents, Michelle’s work explores kids-of-immigrants stories, divinity, queerness, intuition, joy-as-resistance, healing and spaces in-between. Their recent interests include architecture, building, builder/architects, emotional geographies, and Gregorian chant, and she's channeling all that into a new choral piece/multi-disciplinary building project featuring medievally-inspired music about space, belonging and online dating called rúbedo, supported by a launching residency at BAM in September of 2024.

Her musical PRESENCIA (composer/lyricist/ bookwriter/title role) premiered at the Bushwick Starr in June of 2024 in association with the Sol Project and Oye Group with support from Musical Theater Factory, and was developed with a residency at BAM and a concert at Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City. Musicals in development include OUT THERE (composer/lyricist) at Portland Center Stage with William Carlos Angulo and Isaac Gómez; and RAIMUNDA (composer/lyricist) with Noelle Viñas, which was developed through Ars Nova’s Van Lier Fellowship and Maker’s Lab and at NYSAF. Her music project MICHA became a finalist for NPR’s 2018 Tiny Desk Contest with her song “Nena Nena Nena,” praised for a “bilingual set spanning laid-back southern soul and Latin pop flare” (NPR). Micha is based between central Vermont and Brooklyn, NY, and when she isn’t writing music she enjoys surfing, reading and designing objects. 

With a voice that is “clear and compelling” and a sound that features “flourishes of bolero, bossa nova and even jazz” (Chicago Tribune), Ms. Rodriguez captivates as a performer with her vulnerability onstage. Known for her concert works, she has presented VISIONS at Joe’s Pub, J. Lo at the Dance Call at Ars Nova, East o’ West o’! at Ars Nova and Steppenwolf and given concerts at Lincoln Center, Signature Theater, Rattlestick Theater and elsewhere. Rodriguez made her Public Theater début composing the music for The Mobile Unit’s production of The Tempest directed by Laurie Woolery and subsequently toured MICHA MÚSICA: In Transit (Mobile Unit/Joe’s Pub). Rodriguez was an Artist in Residence at the Lexington Theater Company in Lexington, KY and has received support from the Sundance Institute, New York Theater Workshop, The Public Theater, SPACE on Ryder Farm, The Sol Project, Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, Salonathon and the University of Chicago.

Theatre performance credits include PRESENCIA (Bushwick Starr), JOY (by Migguell Angello; Lincoln Center), Uncovering Downtown by Mona Mansour and Jessica Holt (En Garde Arts), The Conversationalists by Jerome Ellis and James Harrison Monaco (Bushwick Starr; “gorgeously sung” -NYT), The Fly Honey Show (The Inconvenience), La Havana Madrid (lead role u/s, Teatro Vista/Steppenwolf/Goodman Theater) (ALTA Award for Music Direction for Goodman run), Ava in East o’, West o’! (Ars Nova), and early concert iterations of Hundred Days by The Bengsons.

Michelle has kept up a rigorous international teaching artist practice, spending two years teaching music, theater and art at the Monteverde Friends School in Monteverde, Costa Rica and visiting King's Academy in Madaba, Jordan twice as an artist in residence. In the United States she has worked fostering creativity and teaching songwriting and musical theater songwriting in Vermont public schools, the Chicago Public Libraries, Greenwich House Music School and the Bushwick Starr in New York, Musical Theater Factory’s Musical Theater Institute, Barrington Stage and through various residencies throughout the country.

Michelle was trained in voice as a high school student at the University of Kentucky under Dr. Noemi Lugo, is a proud public-school-trained violinist with a special interest in fiddle music from Ireland, Scotland and the US, and received her BA in Theatre and Arabic Studies from Williams College. She is represented by Luke Virkstis at WME.

Check out Jesse Cameron Alick’s profiles of the 2023-2024 Bushwick Starr Season Artists.

this.is.michelle.rodriguez@gmail.com - 312-802-5046