Carla Cantrelle

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ACTOR, SINGER

For Articulate:
Articulating the Arts: Folk City Scenes - Guest Artist
Performed as one half of the acoustic folk duo Wolf & Cantrelle, providing musical entertainment for pre-show, intermission, and set changes.
Carla Cantrelle has a wide-ranging career as a performer, playwright, and director. She has appeared five times (often in her own plays) at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe where she received rave reviews and was nominated for an acting award; at the 1st FringeNYC (as Dionysus in her adaptation of The Bacchae) and the PhillyFringe (in her own play Food for Thought)– selling out the venues at both events. She has performed in Nashville (where she earned her SAG membership after being cast in films, commercials, and television shows), Tel Aviv, San Francisco, the New York Theater Workshop, Joe’s Pub, and every theater on Theater Row. She performed in her solo pieces at The Knitting Factory and the Estrogenius Festival, and she adapted her one-act, Chips and Salsa, for WBAI’s “Arts in the Evening,” which she also performed in. She originated the role of Polly in Arlene Hutton’s As It Is In Heaven (ArcLight Theater/NYC and Assembly Rooms/Edinburgh) and then was cast as Phebe for the production of the same play in Maine (Stonington Opera House Arts) and as Rachel for a revival produced at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York. More recently she directed The Vagina Monologues and performed in Hutton’s I Dream Before I Take The Stand for a V-Day event at Ensemble Studio Theater.

Her work as a playwright/director has won her grants from the Ira and Leonore Gershwin Trusts, the Gadsby Foundation, and an Independent Artists Challenge Grant from The Field, as well as a residency at The 78th Street TheatreLab. Her short play, Let’s Not Talk About Men, produced at the Turnip Festival, was published in the anthology Best 10-Minute Plays of 2010 (Smith & Krause) and has since received a number of productions throughout the US. She was commissioned by the Ellis Island-Statue of Liberty Foundation to write a play about the immigrant experience (Remember the Dream), where it ran for 8 months and also commissioned by Vital Children’s Theater to write the book for a children’s musical on the issue of diversity (My New York) which was performed at the theater and then toured.  

After spending six years in Nashville singing songwriters’ demos, doing backup singing, and performing with her pop group, The Little Twisters, she returned to her home town of New York. As part of the folk duo Wolf & Cantrelle, she performs for Concerts in Motion, an organization that provides professional musical entertainment at hospitals, senior centers, schools, and community centers.

Cantrelle currently teaches “Improv for Scientists” for the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science.

Union: Actors Equity Association