ABOUT
Anna Miles is a writer and director of theater, film, digital, and immersive work and the founder of the feminist artist collective Beating of Wings (www.beatingofwingscollective.com). Recent theater projects include “Coriolanus” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Assistant Director; director Rosa Joshi), “In the Green” by Grace McLean at The Wayward Artist (Director), “A Sad Tale’s Best for Winter” (Writer, Director), produced with Noise Now at A Noise Within Theatre, and “Puffs” and “Our Town” at Woodland Opera House (Director). With Beating of Wings, Anna most recently directed, wrote, and produced the outdoor immersive dance show "Our Feet Off the Ground," a feminist retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's fairytales. Her short film “Zenith” (Director, Co-Writer) was an official selection of the NYX Collective’s “13 Minutes of Horror” festival, and her work in digital theater includes both video design for live events and as fully-digital projects such as “#NeverAlone,” an interactive Instagram experience (Director, Co-Creator). Anna was a Semi-Finalist for the 2023 Beatrice Terry Drama League Directing Residency, a member of the 2022 Kennedy Center Directing Intensive cohort, and holds a BA in Theater from Northwestern University and an MFA from Brown/Trinity.
Her strengths and values as a director center around a balance between rigor and precision and fun and flexibility; an attention to detail balanced with a commitment to creating a cohesive vision; reimagining and challenging the ways we traditionally use text, space, architecture, and movement; and most importantly, celebrating all voices and fostering an environment of open communication and collaboration.
Ideologically, she is a feminist theater maker and is drawn to lyrical, poetic, and nonlinear narratives and plays.Her work often focuses on feminist adaptations and reimagings of classical plays, myths, and fairytales, with the goal of creating new myths which can help us understand our current times and current selves. She is passionate about immersive and digital theater and the potential to incorporate these forms into the traditional theatrical landscape. Through a synthesis of text, movement, and music, she aims to tap into a visceral and subconscious kind of storytelling. Anna is particularly committed to the innovative use of space, always aiming to create cohesion (or intentional contrast) between container, form, content, and theme, and to create a fully embodied, holistic, and unique experience with each project.
From the Inside, Out
Lucia Joyce, Collaborator, Beating of Wings Company Member, and Cast Member of A Sad Tale's Best for Winter shares her experiences
The women-driven, LA-based theatre company, Beating of Wings Collective, found its way into my heart so quickly and unconventionally that I was still in quiet awe of the whole experience long after the applause ended and the chairs were put away.
I'm smiling at the remarkable timing and joyful buzz of this opportunity, even now.
In the land of Hollywood gatekeepers, depressingly specific casting breakdowns, and packed audition calls, I booked a role in a full-length, feminist reimagining of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale retitled: A Sad Tale's Best For Winter, and sporting original choreography and music.
Director/Playwright Anna Miles, a kind, driven, and sharp-witted creative, offered me the job through a friend's name-drop and a perusal of my website (Thanks Wix!). We met over breakfast in the NoHo Arts District, discussing typical theatre preconceptions and the ambitious dreams she had for Beating of Wings and the Sad Tale project. My first art language being dance, and Anna's being theatre/song, we connected over mutual admiration for both art forms (and a really good scone). I felt a silent, shared trust of each other's passion and dedication. Anna was featuring choreography and hiring a more dance-minded actor for the first time. I was jumping from commercial dance gigs and classically misogynist musicals straight into her indie, experimental theatre with Shakespearean text and A-cappella soundscapes. A scone was eaten, a bond was forged, and the excitement was palpable.
Over the course of three weeks, our team of versatile artists fused harmonic melodies, challenging monologues, extensive prop work, and visceral movement in one 2.5 hour performance on a Sunday in November.
We were billed as a staged reading, but as the play went on, lighting, sound, costumes, and clever original dialogue transformed our office-like studio space into something other worldly. Script pages were torn and littered across the staging area, to be replaced by flowers in the second act. The corseted, oppressed women of the court became barefoot songstresses in a warmer, freer place. The story didn't just reveal the consequences of toxic masculinity and female oppression...
...it also uncovered the flaws of an all-out dismissal of men and what they've built. There were moments of intense grief and childlike awe. There were genuine laughs and friendly jabs at the current social norms, as well as the upturned expectations of a Shakespearean theatre experience. The costumes were hand sewn; each prop movement a mulled-over decision that reflected back on the story (we were traveling between worlds, after all). A bucket of mud served as a sticky reminder of where we all came from, and where we all eventually return.My general impression? It was awesome. The people and project were a much-needed departure from the usual commercial dance rooms (or my guilty avoidance of them). I was diving in with my fresh acting/song training and all the discipline I carry with me from a dozen years in production shows of all types. It felt wildly refreshing to be part of something so off the beaten track (No high kicks? No winks to the 4th wall? Wha?!) And...it just plain felt good to bring in a diverse set of skills and to take in the talent of my lovely peers. I want to thank Anna and the entire cast and crew of Sad Tale for taking a chance on me, for using me as dance captain, and for inviting me into the Beating of Wings Collective.
From the Outside, In
Review: A Sad Tale's Best for Winter
by Miranda Johnson-Haddad
As a Shakespeare academic who focuses on Performance Studies, and therefore also a veteran of many productions of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, I was excited about seeing the workshop performance by Beating of Wings of their play A Sad Tale’s Best for Winter. Although I had been intrigued by what I’d learned about the play, the workshop performance completely surpassed my expectations. I was very impressed by the staging of the first half of the play, which is more directly Shakespearean than the second half, for its thought-provoking innovations, which reflect the company’s confidence in performing Shakespeare, and which shed new light on this enigmatic late Romance. But the second half took me utterly by surprise with its creative reimagining of an alternative yet thoroughly integrated storyline for Shakespeare’s female characters as they appear in the second half of the original play. This alternate version resolves much of the lingering uneasiness that twenty-first century audiences may understandably experience when watching Shakespeare’s play; and it is a measure of the sensitivity and intelligent awareness of Sad Tale’s author and of the company’s cast and creatives that the modern reframing feels like a natural extension of Shakespeare’s Romance – an homage and an exploration, rather than a criticism. I was especially delighted in the second half of Sad Tale by the judicious inclusion of many lines from Shakespeare’s other plays, an inclusion that is indicative of the author’s and the company’s well-informed understanding of Shakespeare; and while a recognition of these passages will certainly enhance the pleasure felt by Shakespeare fans in any audience, that level of familiarity with Shakespeare is by no means required to enjoy Sad Tale or to appreciate its deeper message. Sad Tale is the rare Shakespearean-inspired play that is certain to appeal to both the specialist and the non-specialist alike, for it takes the inherent theatricality of Shakespeare’s play – a theatricality that can be both gratifying and challenging to realize fully onstage – and fearlessly embraces and then boldly runs with that very theatricality. A Sad Tale’s Best for Winter deserves a wider audience. I look forward to seeing where Beating of Wings is able to take their thoughtful and thought-provoking play in its future development.