Joyce Griffen

Jazz singer, actress, writer, director, Teaching Artist, love to cook.

Starting out as a dancer, it wasn’t long before the demands of the New York City theater world had me earning union memberships as an actor in Actors Equity, AFTRA, and SAG; working as an actress, singer, and dancer. My most favorite performances in the theater were as the lead in John O. Killens’ COTILLION, with the New Federal Theater and as Woman One in FROM THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA, produced by the Negro Ensemble Company.

As a Columbia University School of the Arts, Writer’s Guild of America East Foundation, Harlem Arts Alliance Screenwriting Workshop Fellow, I’ve written a screenplay, entitled PO’ ROBIN and UNCLE BAY, currently being submitted by a literary agent. My one-act play entitled FORMERLY KNOWN as SARAH received an Arthur Miller Fellowship from the Lunch Hour Theater at Gramercy Park’s Players Club in 2006.

The play was first presented as part of the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s festival GOING TO THE RIVER 2006, A Celebration of African-American Women Playwrights. In 2008 it was presented by the Maxine Greene Foundation in Manhattan, at the Museum of the City of New York on 5th Ave, and at the Paul Robeson Theatre in Brooklyn. The first 2009 production was at St. John’s University’s Queens Campus.

I began directing at the request of famed playwright Ed Bullins. my directing credits include Spinning into Butter at the Schoolhouse Theater, Croton Falls; Zora Speaks, at the Theater at Riverside Church; Chuleta, by Lillian Santos, and her own Madame C.J. Walker – A Musical Biography at the Museum of the City of New York.

I currently work as a Teaching Artist for both the Lincoln Center Institute and American Ballet Theatre. Also a jazz singer, my duo jazz CD with guitarist Howard Post, ALONE TOGETHER, and my live club performances can be viewed and heard at myspace.com/joycegriffen.