Que Será Será
Whatever Will Be Will Be
Written and Performed by
Zelda (aka Judith Z. Miller)
Que Será Será
Whatever Will Be Will Be
Written and Performed by
Zelda (aka Judith Z. Miller)
NEWS!
Lace Mill multi-media artist Zelda aka Judith Z. Miller is awarded an Arts Mid-Hudson "Jumpstart" grant to support performances of Que Será, Será: A Life’s Journey of Sexual Orientation & Gender Expression in Ulster County New York. Arts Mid-Hudson, whose mission is to provide vision and leadership to support thriving and diverse arts in the Mid-Hudson Valley, awarded “Jumpstart” funds to 33 applicants for a total of $41,500. The peer review panel was composed of community stakeholders, artists, and nonprofit professionals. Radio Kingston signs on as the projects’ Community Partner.
Thanks to Radio Kingston for filming the live performance of Que Será Será at the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center on Dec 8th, 2019. Watch on Vimeo
Become a Supporter!
Support the continued development of Que Será, Será by donating to this fundraiser and be recognized in performance programs!
Upcoming Performances
Zelda in Performance
Studio Theatre
In Exile
STILL AVAILABLE TO STREAM!
Zelda's True Story: "Alone for Passover" + Original Artwork
OREGON FRINGE
FESTIVAL
July 11, 2021
Stream of Que Sera, Sera on World Fringe Day - Featured Presentation.
Zelda in the Media
July 7, 2021
LGBT Center NYC -
Queer Portraits Profile
From our long-running Second Tuesday lecture series to premieres, panels and performances, we attract notable public figures from the arts, politics and academia to create, connect and celebrate with you.
June 28, 2021
TMI Project -
The Housing Stories
TMI Project is a nonprofit transmedia organization teaching true storytelling workshops and creating inspiring live performances and bold digital content that focus on the “too much information” parts of a story, the parts typically left out because of shame or stigma.
July 2 - 4, 2021
WGXC Radio -
Defiant Masculinity
Defiant Masculinity is a radio theatre production born out of The Broken Bois Series–a compilation of transmissions exploring how social constructs of masculinity have been historically warped by media.
May 8, 2021
Zelda discusses her life as an author, artist and performer. She highlights her most recent work ‘Que Sera, Sera‘, a show chronicling her experience of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Listen to the podcast here.
A Life’s Journey of Sexual Orientation & Gender Expression.
This multi-media show chronicles the joys and challenges of navigating non-binary Queerness from childhood in the 1950s to adulthood.
Written & Performed by Zelda (aka Judith Z. Miller)
Script Editor & Poster: Raine Grayson
Why Que Será, Será, and why now?
We are in a time of deep discord and danger for many marginalized people. The sands are shifting for the LGBTQ community and there seems to be no stable ground. While I’ve often felt both angry and terrified about the actions of the Right Wing, my heart and my experience tell me that along with the necessity of direct political action, there is nothing like personal story to affirm common experience and build bridges. My deepest hope is that sharing my raw and real personal story will help move us in that healing direction.
History
Que Será, Será originated in its nascent stage as a response to the MEN show at the Lace Mill artist residence in Kingston New York in April 2018 where a 30-minute version was performed 12 times. The show was further developed under an Arts Mid-Hudson Individual Artist Commission. In December of 2019, a live performance of Que Será, Será was filmed and broadcast live from the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center by Radio Kingston.
After the pandemic shut down all in-person performances, Que Será has been shared by numerous online Fringe Festivals throughout the country, selected as a Featured Presentation by the Oregon Fringe for World Fringe Day, and in the Midsumma Fringe Festival in Australia where the show received its first international media review.
In addition to Fringe Festival appearances, the video has been shared by the Ulster County Women’s Network, presented as an educational/training webinar by RUACH Support, and the “Sheitelstock” section of the show was selected by Blunt Space Inc. (Art, Advocacy, Culture) for their “New Shit Wednesdays” on Instagram, and by MAD (Midtown Arts District) in Kingston NY for their Celebration of the Arts Video Showcase.
Recently, Zelda was twice named Storyteller of the Week by the TMI Project, profiled by the NYC LGBTQ Center, appeared on Talk with TQ, and performed as part of an experimental program 'Defiant Masculinity' on WGXC Radio out of Catskill New York.
The new 2022 “Jumpstart” award from Arts Mid Hudson supports upcoming performances and Ulster County NY and follows Zelda’s 2021 selection to participate in the NYSCA/NYFA Artist As Entrepreneur program in partnership with Arts Mid-Hudson.
You can support the show with a charitable donation that will fund the production here.
Upcoming in 2022
Que Será will be housed in the Lesbian Herstory Archives and shared on the new HUDSY.TV app. More details to follow.
Reviews
April 14, 2021
Kate Herbert Theatre Reviews
(Australia)
"The title of this gently confronting and evocative storytelling performance says it all. It is A Life’s Journey of Sexual Orientation and Gender Expression told by the charming and engaging Zelda (AKA Judith Z. Miller) who opens her heart and her life to the audience ... imbuing her memories with passion, joy and melancholy, her stories are quirky and funny, distressing and sad, excitable and volatile and intermittently suicidal and tragic ... Que Será Será is truly an epic tale of a coming of age in one’s sexuality and gender identity.”
Via her intimate and powerful writing, Zelda’s expertly guides the audience so that we may all examine, accept, and appreciate our own life’s journey. Although focused on her own Queer journey, Zelda’s story illuminates the dark moments many of us struggle with alone with compassion, warmth and humor, transforming the highly personal into an entertaining and universally relatable experience.
Lilia Perez
Grants & Programs Manager, Arts Mid-Hudson
Just thrilled. Thrilled to come. Very powerful. Very moving. I think it’s a powerful message and one that needs to get out. I’m so grateful that she was given grants to do be able to do this work. It could really save … It could stop some kid from committing suicide.
Elaine Trott
retired
I was captivated and moved by Zelda’s stories, sometimes cringing and melting in quick succession. Powerful work, worth your attention.
Seth David Branitz
Author, The Trouble With Kim, workshop teacher with TMI Project
I just saw Judith's powerful autobiographical performance. It was so well done, tightly written, and so well presented. It's just over an hour, go check it out. Well worthwhile! … Amazing. I was so impressed … immediately I knew that it was going to be really good, really powerful … strong in a powerful way … then as you went deeper and deeper — so open to allowing us to experience your life so intimately, just felt like a gift to us … I’ve never heard a work like this done that really touches on the past and brings it to a contemporary sense of all the things that are going on … This among any work I’ve ever seen over the past number of years … had an amazing contemporary felling … And the delivery is just incredible, I mean I could not ask for a better … If I was directing it … The delivery was incredible and it was so powerful, all of us were engaged. You could feel it … Even with all of the difficult material …. You did a wonderful just flowing back and forth … you had us by surprise so many times … it’s really going well and oh, and then you take us out … and it’s up again …. just through the waves. Just top notch. Congratulations!
Stephen Blauweiss
Filmaker/Historian
Addie Farr, 27
Artist/Art Educator
Stephen Blauweiss
Filmmaker/Historian
Kale Kaposhilin
Technical Director, Radio Kingston
BethAnn Shoenfeld, MSW, 58
Mixed Media Artist/Photographer
Pictures from Live Performances
All photos by James Orr Photography
Video Previews
Watch two stories developed in workshop with the TMI Project that are being adapted for the show.
TMI Project
MHA in Ulster County
Zelda (aka Judith Z. Miller) was 8 years old when she saw Some Like It Hot for the first time. All she could focus on? Marilyn Monroe's breasts. And thus begins Zelda's journey through her childhood as she learns about herself-- and why she came out a "lezzie."
About the Author/Performer
Zelda is a multifaceted artist who lives in an erotic, musical, spiritual universe. As a feminist Jew who studies shamanism, she is inspired by the beauty of nature and the guiding force of her intuition as she explores the themes of connection to the Earth, spirituality, sexuality and gender.
Currently, under an Arts Mid-Hudson Jumpstart Grant she is performing Que Será, Será: A Life’s Journey of Sexual Orientation & Gender Expression that was developed under an Arts Mid-Hudson Individual Artist Commission. She was also recently selected to participate in the NYFA/NYSCA Artists as Entrepreneur Program in partnership with Arts Mid-Hudson. Zelda was awarded an NEA Arts Management Fellowship in Theatre and a Fractured Atlas Development Grant. She produces Zelda's Happenings, a series of black light, body-painting, percussion dance parties.
As the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Fine Line Actors Theatre in Washington DC Zelda produced and performed in special constituency projects, including the groundbreaking Women’s Prison Project. She performed at such venues as Source, GALA Hispanic Theatre and the Kennedy Center in DC, in NYC at WOW Café Theatre and Dixon Place, and with the TMI Project in Kingston. Zelda was profiled in The Daily News; the subject of feature articles in Mann About Town magazine, Home News Tribune, In Brooklyn, The Park Slope Paper, The Wave, and The Daily Sitka Sentinel, featured on NY-1 Television. Zelda is published in Inside Arts magazine, The Washington Post, American Theatre magazine, Ecosexuality: When Nature Inspires the Arts of Love, and she is a contributor to the Queeries Blog and Zine.
Zelda lives at the Lace Mill artist residence in Kingston New York with her Great Dane Mademoiselle ZaZelle.
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*Performances of Que Será, Será at the Lace Mill are supported in part by an Arts Mid-Hudson Jumpstart Grant. These awards are made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by Arts Mid-Hudson. Radio Kingston is Que Será, Será’s Community Partner.