Joseph Mydell

Joseph Mydell (born 1955) is a screen and stage actor, writer and public speaker. Early life Joseph Mydell was born 1955 in Savannah, Georgia. He attended West Savannah elementary school; Tompkins High School (class of 1963); Morehouse College (1964-65), where he met Martin Luther King, when King spoke at his alma mater after receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace. Inspired by King, and the call of Bahá'ís to participated in the (probably third) Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965. Mydell then continued his education at the New York University, School of the Arts(B.F.A., 1970; M.F.A., 1974) City University of New York (CUNY Ph. D Theatre studies, 1976–1979). Career Mydell got his training as a student actor, working with Dr. Baldwin Burroughs and the Atlanta Morehouse Spelman Players in Shakespeare”s The Tempest, and Trials of Brother Jero by Wole Soyinka. In 1969 Mydell co-performed a play Who is America at the US Bahá'í national convention, the first "Youth for the World" conference in Nashville, Tennessee, then at another one in Dayton, Ohio, that summer, and later in November at the University Park campus of the Pennsylvania State University. At NYU, he was trained by Lloyd Richards, Olympia Dukakis, Kristin Linklater, and directed by Andre Gregory. His professional career began in New York with the New York Shakespeare Festival and Lincoln Center theatre. He got his Equity card understudying Clevon Little off- Broadway. He also worked at Seattle Repertory theatre and for the National Endowment for the Arts in their touring production, “For All Times”.