Joseph Mydell

Joseph Mydell is an American stage and screen actor born in 1955 in Savannah, Georgia. He attended West Savannah Elementary School and Tompkins High School, graduating with the class of 1963, before enrolling at Morehouse College from 1964 to 1965. During his time at Morehouse, he was present when Martin Luther King spoke at the college following King's receipt of the Nobel Prize for Peace. Inspired by King, Mydell participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965. He also responded to the call of Baháʼís during this period, and in 1969 co-performed a play titled Who is America at the U.S. Baháʼí national convention's first "Youth for the World" conference in Nashville, Tennessee, with subsequent performances in Dayton, Ohio, and at the University Park campus of Pennsylvania State University later that year.

Mydell pursued formal theatrical training at New York University's School of the Arts, earning a B.F.A. in 1970 and an M.F.A. in 1974, followed by doctoral study in theatre at the City University of New York from 1976 to 1979. At NYU he was trained by Lloyd Richards, Olympia Dukakis, and Kristin Linklater, and was directed by Andre Gregory. Earlier theatrical training included work with Dr. Baldwin Burroughs and the Atlanta Morehouse Spelman Players in productions of Shakespeare's The Tempest and Wole Soyinka's Trials of Brother Jero.

His professional acting career began in New York with the New York Shakespeare Festival and Lincoln Center Theatre. He obtained his Equity card by understudying Clevon Little in an off-Broadway production, and also worked at Seattle Repertory Theatre and with the National Endowment for the Arts on their touring production For All Times. While conducting research in England in 1979 for a one-man show on poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, titled Lyrics of the Hearthside, Mydell developed the piece alongside his doctoral studies. The show earned him a Fringe First award and the Best One-Man Show award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1980, and the United States Information Service subsequently sponsored an African tour of the production.

Mydell went on to establish a long association with the Royal Shakespeare Company spanning more than thirty years, and has also worked extensively at the Royal National Theatre. His Broadway career includes an appearance in Medea in 2002.