Creating and collaborating across media.
Some people go on to grad school right after college. Haviland Stillwell took her knowledge to Broadway and landed a role alongside Rosie O’Donnell, Alfred Molina, Harvey Fierstein, and Lea Michele in Fiddler on the Roof. She also recorded the cast album and performed on The Tonys while in the show.
Not bad for a recent college grad.
Since then Stillwell has taken her talents, charm, and (may we say) extraordinary beauty to stages across the country.
” I have always been a theatre girl, always loved the energy that comes from a live audience,” she says. ” I love singing and acting, so the blend of the two is really important to me in storytelling, connecting to a character, and expressing a piece of the human experience.”
After Fiddler, Stillwell was cast in the LES MIS revival, and got to play the Factory Girl to Daphne Rubin-Vega’s Fantine (Stillwell was also Rubin-Vega’s understudy).
“Laying on the floor of a Broadway stage singing your face off in a corset, expressing all those feelings, with the conductor, the divine Kevin Stites, about three feet from you, with an audience watching, there is really nothing like it,” she says.
And her talent for combining acting and music has taken her to some big venues, including Radio City Music Hall, Atlanta’s Symphony Hall, LA’s Rockwell, Eleven, SxSW, Dinah Vegas, NYC’s Joe’s Pub and The Lincoln Center.
Stillwell says visibility is really important and she made a conscious decision when she was 18 that she would always be out in her personal, and professional life.
“As an artist, it’s really hard to be fully present, honest and open in your work, if you are hiding this part of yourself,” she says. “And performing arts is incredibly important to the lesbian community, specifically, because, let’s be honest, we have a lot of feelings to express.”
Bring on Stillwell’s newest project, a sizzling hot full length album called “Spark”, just released this week. The first music video, is a fine example of the production, photography, mixing, mastering, and design work needed to grab the audience.
But fear not. Stillwell says she’ll always keep her hands in theater too.
“If I were a visual artist, I wouldn’t just create in one medium,” she says. ” I love performing live, and will continue to do so as much as I possibly can, playing characters whose stories I feel connected to, and have the desire to tell! I love collaborating, and theatre is all about that!”