MFA | Writing, Criticism | Capstone Thesis Project
Michael Whaley has been on the Taliesin faculty since 2006, and a core faculty member since 2008. His annual season-long Writing Workshop at Taliesin in Spring Green, which snags all master’s and bachelor’s students, has been reviled, extolled, and somehow endured by just about every one of those students. He worked for American Players Theatre (Spring Green) for seven seasons, from 1985-91, first as Academy Director and then as Associate Artistic Director.
Among his solo directing credits at APT are Macbeth (1990) and The Winter’s Tale (1991). His most memorable theatre experience came in 1979 when he co-directed Prometheus Bound for a professional state theatre in Wrocław, Poland. (After four months of rehearsal and just two performances the production was shut down and he was expelled from the country.) He has written for television (NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Streets) and children’s theatre. His ballet-drama adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince, which he directed in April, 2000, was the first production of the River Arts Center in Prairie du Sac, WI. He continues to write for the theater and, as soon as he cancels his Netflix subscription, will begin to make his own films. Michael has been a founder and board member of the River Valley Soccer Association, the Spring Green Literary Festival, the Spring Green Area Arts Coalition, and the Spring Green Center for Creativity and Innovation. He received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1974 and his M.F.A. in Dramatic Literature and Criticism from the Yale School of Drama in 1977.
He and his wife, Gigi La Budde, an ecologist and educator, have three children. Michael loves to hunt wild mushrooms and play soccer. He has not failed to notice that as he gets older his soccer game looks more and more like mushroom hunting.