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Melissa R. Randel is an actor, dancer, and theater-maker. She was born in Portland, Maine to Rockette dancer, Myrna Randolph Randel and jazz trombonist, Herb Randel. Her first nine years were spent assisting her dance teacher mother and earning college money doing commercials for a potato chip company. When her father took a sales job with Gretsch drums and guitars, the family moved to Memphis, and later, Los Angeles, California.
To satisfy her parents, Melissa attended the University of California Irvine and majored in dance. To satisfy herself, she graduated in three years to pursue a performing career.
Highlights of Melissa's early career range from being a magician's assistant in Mexico to playing Judy Turner in Michael Bennett's A Chorus Line on Broadway. She spent five years in the Broadway, International, National, and Bus and Truck companies of A Chorus Line (1980-1985). The tutelage of Michael Bennett, Bob Avian, Marvin Hamlisch, and Joseph Papp left an indelible impression. In her words, "It was my Julliard."
Inspired by a line of dialogue, "Don't you want to do more than just dance in the chorus?" Melissa left A Chorus Line and attended The Actor's Space two-year conservatory program. She subsequently built a reputation for originating roles Off Broadway and in the 99 seat theaters of Los Angeles. Productions include the NYC premiere of Molly Newman's Shooting Stars (1988), the Los Angeles premieres of Sheila Callaghan's Roadkill Confidential (2012) and Suzanne Bradbeer's Confederates 2017). Her talents were also used to generate original plays with at-risk populations in New York City and Los Angeles public schools and juvenile justice systems.
When the Universe dropped a full-time teaching job in her lap, Melissa embarked on an academic career at Glendale Community College. She chaired the dance department for two years, and the theater department for more than a decade.
Extensive training with Anne Bogart's SITI Company, (2006-2022) an Avant garde, movement-based theater company, coincided with Melissa's foray into academia. Guided by Broadway and experimental muses, Melissa mounted wildly inventive productions of classics and musicals including: Romeo and Juliet, Waiting for Lefty, The Cherry Orchard, Godspell, and original, devised theater: This is not a Tree and We are Stardust. (leapinthedarkproductions.com)
In 2013, Melissa launched her own production company, Leap in the Dark Productions. The inaugural production, The Hat, was an original, semi-autobiographical play with dance and music. The Hat premiered as a duet with renowned New York City jazz trombonist David Gibson, at the New York International Fringe Festival in 2013. It was re-imagined as a solo project entitled, The Women of The Hat at Alva's Showroom, Hollywood Fringe Festival, Los Angeles Women's Theater Festival, and at The Rag Factory in London in 2017.
In 2019, an early draft of Melissa's original play, Sorry. was selected by SITI Company for a SITI Lab residency in New York. Sorry. is in pre-production in Los Angeles (2022).
"As an actor, the revelation of the human condition is my goal. When an actor allows the exquisite world of the body to wrestle with the complexity of the heart, we cannot look away. This is where the bar is set."
