Margot Harley is a dancer, producer, Artistic Director and Co-Founder of The Acting Company.  In 1968 she became the Administrator of the Drama Division for the already existing Juilliard School of Music, located at 120 Claremont Avenue, Morningside Heights, when John Houseman hired her to help him create this new division of the school prior to the completion of Lincoln Center in 1969.  As well as being the Administrator of the Drama Division for 12 years, and the Producer of the Acting Company, she produced many shows with The Acting Company Off-Broadway including: John Houseman’s revival of THE CRADLE WILL ROCK (1983) at The American Place Theatre and the Old Vic Theatre in London; TEN BY TENNESSEE (1986) at The Lucille Lortel Theatre; ON THE VERGE (1987) at The John Houseman Theater; THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER (2004) at New York Theatre Workshop; and DESIRE (2015) at 59 East 59. In 1975 Harley produced on Broadway ’The Robber Bridegroom’ with Patti LuPone and Kevin Kline.   Margot Harley continues the work of the Acting Company today.

Margot Harley began life as a classical dancer, training at The American Ballet School.  Her teachers there included George Balanchine, Alexandra Danilova, Muriel Stuart (a student of Pavlova’s).  She went to Sarah Lawrence College majoring in Dance under the tutelage of Bessie Schonberg.  Harley also attended LAMDA on a Fulbright Scholarship.  As a professional, she danced with many companies including those of Hanya Holme, Doris Humphrey and Valerie Bettis.  Not being able to make enough money while dancing with these groups she became a show dancer and spent many years on and Off-Broadway.  When her show Milk and Honey toured to San Francisco she went with it until it closed there.  Once that happened, she decided to leave dancing altogether and got a job at KQED (similar to Channel 13) producing a news show.  She decided to return to New York City and got a job at Channel 13.  She met a friend, married to a viola teacher at Juilliard, who told her John Houseman was looking for someone to help him start a drama division for the Juilliard School of Music.  Their first class in 1968, GROUP 1, was an extremely talented group including Patti LuPone, Kevin Kline, Mary Lou Rosato, Gerald Guttierez, David Schramm, David Ogden Stiles among others.  Toward the senior year of this group Houseman and Harley created The Acting Company in an effort to keep this company of actors together and give them the performance experience they needed to become great actors.  In 1971 they took the work developed in their fourth year, THE HOSTAGE, THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL, THE LOWER DEPTHS and WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN directly out on tour all over the country, including areas that had never had professional theater before. Gerald Guttierez stopped acting to become the Staff Repertory Director working as an assistant to all the legendary guest directors while maintaining the shows once on tour. Most in the company stayed four years, two eight, after the four years they had together as undergraduates. As Harley states in her quote above, ‘touring is a really good experience for actors to hone their craft, big theater one night, small theater the next night…there is nothing like that to develop an actor.“