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Tera Nicole Miller is Squeamish in Theatre Conspiracy’s ‘The Country Wife’

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tera-01Opening December 1 in the Foulds Theater at the Alliance for the Arts is Theatre Conspiracy’s production of William Wycherley’s The Country Wife. Directed by Karen Goldberg, the play stars Shelley Sanders as Margery, Mitch Haley as Harry Horner, Jim Yarnes as Pinchwife, Dena Galyean as Alithea, Stephen Hooper as Doctor Quack, Elvis Mortley as Sir Jasper Fidget, Cantrella Canady as Lady Fidget, Tom Marsh as Sparkish, Juan Alejandro as Harcourt and Tera Nicole Miller as Squeamish.

amish-01Tera made her professional stage debut at the age of 9 in Here’s Love at Michigan’s Civic Theater. In January, she astonished local audiences in Jessica Dickey’s The Amish Project, a one-woman show in which she portrayed seven very different characters:

  • Eddie Stuckey, a 33-year-old milkman who tera-02takes ten young girls hostage in a one-room Amish schoolhouse, then shoots them, killing five, before killing himself;
  • Carol Stuckey, his 31-year-old widow;
  • Velda, a 6-year-old victim;
  • Anna, Velda’s 14-year-old sister;
  • America, a pregnant 16-year-old Puerto Rican girl who works at the local grocery store.
  • Sherry Local, a 53-year-old resident who is the town gossip of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania; and
  • Bill North, a 50-something-year-old scholar and professor who’s an expert in religion and the Amish culture, as well as a eva-and-melinda-09spokesman for several of the Amish families affected by the shooting.

There were no costume changes, and no props or hats by which to distinguish between the characters. Instead, Miller remained dressed in a simple, dark Amish outfit throughout the performance, complete with white bonnet and apron. She changed characters simply by altering her melinda-and-alfred-01sposture, voice and gestures.

Prior to The Amish Project, Miller was in Lab Theater’s summer stock play Happy, where, she had the unenviable task of portraying the middle-aged wife of an unambitious tenured literature professor whose best friend recently got involved with a gorgeous but mean-spirited 20-something-year-old tart who forces her to confront just how happy-16unhappy she is in her roles as wife and the mother of a severely-handicapped disabled child.

In addition to Theatre Conspiracy, Lab Theater and RSW’s Black Box Theater, Tera has performed at the Herb-Strauss Theater on Sanibel and the Sugden Theatre for The Naples Players. Her credits include roles in The Play About the Baby, Extremities, The Exile, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Swell Party, Becky Shaw, The Dead Guy, The Liar, Frankenstein Summer, Last Train to Nibroc, Leap, Love, Loss & What I Wore, House of Yes, Polish Joke, What the Butler Saw, See How They Run, Sylvia and The Altruists, melinda-01as well as the national tour of Bill W & Dr. Bob. This past April, she was also in the cast for a staged reading at Lab Theater of Robert Caisley’s The Open Hand and just performed with Shelley Sanders, Stephanie Davis, Mitch Haley, Stephen Hooper and Juan Alejandro in the staged reading of Carolyn Kras’ Highness during Theatre Conspiracy’s 2016-2017 New Play Contest.

When not on stage, Tera can be found behind the scenes as Front of House Manager, Stage Manager, Light/Sound Technician, Box Office Representative final-act-04and Assistant Director at Theatre Conspiracy. In addition to her immense love of the arts, Tera maintains the Burroughs Home and Gardens, a treasured historic landmark in downtown Fort Myers. As Coordinator, she is blessed to combine her passion for history and theatrical talents while staging the property with The Burroughs Family’s irreplaceable artifacts, preserving the archives, ensuring historic integrity is protected, conducting guided terahistorical tours and representing the Home and its lineage through public speaking engagements.

November 24, 2016.

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