Birth Place: Los Angeles, CA
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ADA WESTFALL is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, actor and proud trans-woman. As a composer, her original music for A Play On War (Connelly Theater) earned a 2010 Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Music in a Play. She has composed music for shows by Theater Mitu, The Civilians, NAATCO, and Built For Collapse and wrote/starred as punk burlesque alter-ego Minq Vaadka in Minq Vaadka’s Narcischism: Un Cabaret d’Adieu (Robert Moss Theater). As an onstage musician, she has live-scored, played, and sung in shows like David Byrne’s Joan of Arc: Into the Fire (Public Theater), The Last Goodbye (Old Globe), Death of a Salesman (BAM) and Nuclear Love Affair (Prague Fringe Festival). As an actor; Off-Broadway: Rimbaud in New York (BAM), Songbird (59E59), Juárez: A Documentary Mythology (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater), The Apostle Project (NYTW). Regional: Pageant (Stoneham Theater), Juárez (American tour). International: Death of a Salesman (Santiago), The LaMaMa Cantata (Tokyo), A Dream Play (Abu Dhabi), One Night Stand: An Improvised Musical (Edinburgh Fringe Festival), Juárez (Mexico, Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Cairo). Readings: Big Red Sun (54 Below), Volpone (Playwrights Horizons). Ada has played in other people’s bands and her own at many venues around NYC, such as Joe’s Pub, Mercury Lounge, 54 Below, and Bowery Electric, in addition to self-releasing three albums as Minq Vaadka and three music videos. She has taught as a guest artist at NYU and Tamagawa University and has spent 11 years as an Associate Artist with Theater Mitu, with whom she participated in residencies at New York Theater Workshop, NYU Abu Dhabi, and Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center. She holds a BFA in Theater from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where she attended Playwrights Horizons Theater School and CAP 21. www.adawestfall.com Instagram: @adawestfall