Matt Mitler

Matt Mitler (born May 27, 1955) is an American actor. He is also founding director (1997) of Dzieci Theatre (the polish word for "children"), which balances its work on performance with work of service, through creative and therapeutic interaction in hospitals and a variety of institutional settings. The company is firmly dedicated to process and includes in its repertory the critically acclaimed Fools Mass, which was presented at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Barcelona in 2004 and has been a staple since 1999 at The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. Mr. Mitler and Dzieci Theatre are profiled in Working on the Inside: The Spiritual Life Through the Eyes of Actors by Retta Blaney, and are included, under Performance Theatre, in the current edition of The Encyclopedia of Religion. Training Matt Mitler initially trained in Humanistic and Existential Psychology, and Group Process before discovering the healing potential of theatre. He studied with such masters as Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba in theatre; Carl Rogers and R. D. Laing in psychotherapy; and Jean Houston, Ram Dass, Elizabeth Cogburn, and Michel de Salzmann in more esoteric disciplines. Integrating these pursuits became a lifelong process. Directing and Teaching From 1977 to 2005, Mitler led non-verbal, physically-oriented therapeutic workshops in a variety of settings including Hutchings Psychiatric Center (NY); The Association for Humanistic Psychology; The National Theatre School of Sweden; New Brunswick and Union Theological Seminaries; The Institute for Clergy Excellence; The Heart of the Healer Foundation; The Parliament for the World's Religions; and the graduate school of The University of Psychology of Warsaw, where his essay, Art and Therapy was published in the anthology, New Directions in Psychotherapy. He performed, directed, taught, and formed the international theatre collective The Tribe in Amsterdam, which presented interactive works at a variety of therapeutic institutions and was featured at Le Festival Mondial du Theatre in Nancy, France. Other festivals, which presented Mitler’s work, include: The Koln Festival, Vienna Festwochen, The International Festival of Fools, The Gaukler Festival of Mime, The International Festival of Mimes and Pantomimes (Poland), and The Theatre of Nations.