Luverne Seifert

Luverne Seifert is Co-artistic director of Sod House Theater and has been acting professionally for over 30 years.  He received a National Fox Fellowship for 2017, a Mcknight Fellowship for Theater Artists in 2003 and an Ivey Award in 2009 for his Performance as Phillip K Dick in 800 Words.  He is currently a Senior Teaching Specialist in the Department of Theater Arts and Dance at the University of Minnesota where he teaches beginning acting and physical performance.  PRODUCTIONS:  Guthrie:  Twelfth Night, The 39 Steps, Servant of Two Masters, The Governor Inspector, The Ugly One, Relics Ten Thousand Things:  The Music Man (Harold Hill), Measure for Measure, Vasa Lisa, Man of La Mancha, My Fair Lady (Doolittle), Othello (Iago), Raskol, Richard the Third, Little Shop of Horrors (The Dentist), Antigone, In A Garden, At Your Service, Mud, King Lear, and The Furies. The Moving Company: For Sale Childrens Theater Company: An American Tail, The Last Firefly; Lion, Witch and Wardrobe, Tales of a West Texas Marsupial Girl, Antigone, Go Dog Go, Once Upon a Forest Workhaus Collective:  800 words, A short play about 911, Little Eyes Theatre de la Jeune Lune: Tartuffe, Amerika, The Three Musketeers, Hamlet, Children of Paradise, Gulliver, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Yang Zen Froggs, Germinal, Don Juan Giovanni; . Off-Broadway:  New Victory Theater; Polonius in Hamlet Regional: Tartuffe; South Coast rep, Berkeley Rep, Shakespeare Theater. Servant of Two Masters: ArtsEmerson, The 39 Steps; Arizona Rep Phoenix and Tucson. Yang Zen Froggs, Children of Paradise, Don Juan Giovanni: La Jolla Playhouse, Berkeley Rep, Trinity Rep, The Three Musketeers; Spoleto Festival. Training: Augsburg College, Burlesque Center for clown, Switzerland, Ecole Gaulier, Paris, France.

Artistic Vision: I am a Twin Cities-based professional director and performer who has performed in theater venues across the country who was raised in a low-income community in rural Minnesota. In 2017, I received a Theatre Communications Group Fox Fellowship for Distinguished Achievement, which supports actors with 20 or more years of experience who have amassed a substantial body of work. In 2003, a McKnight Theater Artist Fellowship enabled me to travel to Switzerland to study European clowning techniques with the internationally renowned clown, Pierre Byland. This training greatly impacted my artistry and has made physical comedy my primary focus as a performer and creator. During the past eleven years, I’ve been co-artistic director of Sod House Theater, whose mission has been to bring professional theater experiences to greater Minnesota communities, inspiring people to value and embrace theater as part of a reflective and thoughtful life.  I choose works relevant to rural communities, performing them in venues important to the community’s historical narrative.