Michelle Bellaver is a neurodivergent creative artist who works in film and theatre as an actor, director, producer, and writer. She is an acting company member of The Hippodrome State Theatre and an Assistant Professor in Acting and Directing at California State University, Fresno. She is a Certified Trainer in Somatic Body Voice Kinesensics with the Lessac Research and Training Institute and a Registered Somatic Movement Educator with ISMETA.
She received her MFA in Theatre from the University of Florida.
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Michelle's creative research on the theory and praxis of The Female Gaze as a somatic practice in film and theatre performance and the development of a methodology for her Somatic "The Heart Centered Actor" training is central to her work.
At the 2024 VASTA symposium she presented her research on the use of Lessac Kinesensic Body Wisdom with neurodivergent performers in somatic self-teaching. At the 2022 Lessac International Conference, she presented a paper on her research titled "Lessac Body NRG’s and the creation of on-set film language for The Female Gaze: ‘The Feeling Camera". At the 2023 ATHE conference she presented her work on "The Female Gaze: Deconstruction and Adaptation in Creative Process" during the University of Florida's panel presentation "UF: Building Resiliency in the Face of Obstacles".
Her playwriting has been in residence, received readings, development workshops, and works-in-progress showings at The Tank NYC, the Purple Rose Theatre Company and Dixon Place. Her short story Honeymoon Sweet can be found in The Windsor Review: International Journal.
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She is a proud union member in SAG and Actors Equity Association. Her acting has been seen at La Mama NYC, Hippodrome State Theatre, Word for Word/Z Space, Renegade Theatre Experiment, and Nuance Theatre Company, and some of her film work has streamed on Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
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​Some of her directing credits include her experimental film SAINT: 5 Etudes for Joan of Arc and her recent stage directing credits include The Pliant Girls by Meghan Brown, Dry Land by Ruby Rae Spiegel, and Marie Antoinette by David Adjmi.
She is a member of SAG-AFTRA, AEA, and is a Certified Trainer in Lessac Kinesensics with the Lessac Research and Training Institute.