Sylvia Milo is an award-winning theatre artist, playwright and actress, based in New York City. Originally from Poland, she was 2018 Fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy and was awarded that year’s Fellowship at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York.
Milo wrote, starred in, and self-produced her play, The Other Mozart, about the forgotten, genius sister of Amadeus Mozart. The play had a critically acclaimed Off-Broadway run at HERE Arts Center, earning Drama Desk and Off Broadway Alliance nominations, and 8 New York Innovative Theatre (NYIT) nominations, including Outstanding Full Length Script. The Other Mozart won two NYIT Awards, including Outstanding Solo Performance by Milo.
The play has had over 300 performances to date, including a run in London at St. James Theatre, a run in Munich at the Pasinger Fabrik, and in Hong Kong at the Hong Kong Cultural Center. It was presented in Vienna at the Mozarthaus Vienna (the “Figarohaus”, Wolfgang’s home on Domgasse) and in Salzburg at the invitation of the Mozarteum Foundation (inside the Mozarts’ Wohnhaus apartment). The play inspired the creation of an annual symposium on Maria Anna Mozart beginning the following year at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, and was performed as part of its first edition.
In the US, Milo performed the play at venues including: Shea’s Performing Arts Center (Buffalo), Kravis Center (Palm Beach), Tobin Center (San Antonio, TX), The Academy of Music (Northampton, MA), The Strand Theatre (Shreveport, LA), The Grand 1894 Opera House (Galveston, TX), Rubicon Theatre (Ventura, CA), MATCH (Houston, TX), at the Fermilab (Batavia, IL), Eisemann Center (Richardson, TX), Cherry Lane Theatre (NYC), Players Theatre (NYC), Norton Center For The Arts (Danville, KY), at the Oklahoma Contemporary (Oklahoma City), at Chamber Music Northwest (Portland, OR), and at Balboa Theatre (San Diego).
The play has also been presented at 18 universities, where Sylvia gave lectures to students about creating their own plays. These included: University of the South (Sewanee, TN), Washington & Lee University (Lexington, VA), University of Florida (Gainesville, FL), NC State University (Raleigh, NC), University of Utah (Salt Lake City), Michigan State University (East Lansing), Southern Illinois University (Edwardsville), University of Arkansas (Fayetteville), University at Albany (Albany, NY) and at the University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada).
In 2016, Milo was commissioned by The Guardian to write an article about The Other Mozart and its cultural impact. It continues to be presented internationally, performed by Milo and four other actresses (whom she trained), in four languages (English, French, German and Portuguese), and it returns each year for a run at the Players Theatre in NYC
Sylvia also created the character of Bob Dylan in the OBIE Award-winning The West Village Fragments by Peculiar Works, and as a member of the Bats at the Flea Theater she co-wrote and starred in Seating Arrangements, directed by Eric Pold of Gob Squad. She adapted and directed an all-female version of Hamlet and starred as Ophelia in The Ophelia Landscape at the Mark Morris Center. She has performed at La Mama, Ontological-Hysteric, Theatre For the New City, Dixon Place, Cherry Lane, The Ohio Theatre and at MoMA.
Milo is a graduate of New York University, with extensive training at the Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg Theatre Institutes, and at The Grotowski Institute in Poland. Her new play on Mary Magdalene has been workshopped in NYC at Theaterlab with support from All For One, and at the Baryshnikov Arts Center as part of Sylvia’s and composer Nathan Davis’ Baryshnikov Bogliasco Fellowship Residency.
Sylvia is also a violinist – playing acoustic and electric violins. She studied classical music in Poland, jazz at Milton Academy and at NYU with Mike Richmond, and studied composition with Klaus Sinfelt. Playing in various rock, jazz, avant garde bands, she has performed at NYC venues including Irving Plaza, The Knitting Factory, Galapagos, Webster Hall, CBGB’s and Joe’s Pub. She composed scores for Natasa Trifan dance company at the Merce Cunningham Studio and LaMama, and her solo electric violin score for the play, Cinnamon Moths, was acclaimed in Backstage as “stunning, to say the least.”
