Michael Ryan trained as a dancer with Martha Graham, Hanya Holm and Merce Cunningham. As an actor he has worked extensively in his native Australia winning a best actor award for his work in Marat Sade at the Adelaide Arts Festival as well as Germany where he worked at the Theater am Goetheplatz in Die Perle and created his own environmental work Wonderland. He has studied with Eugenio Barba, Jerzy Grotowski and Wynn Handman. In New York, he was a long-standing company member of Creation Production Company, with whom he created lead roles in Chromatic Spectacles, Ice Station Zebra, The OBIE Award winning Abandon, The Bessie Award winning Memory Theatre of Guilio Camillo, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Propaganda, Nighttown, The Inferno, The Tower and Man Made. Also in New York: Uncontrollable Elements at The Kitchen, Blood Button at The American Place Theater, as well as his own original works The Pasolini Tapes at The Knitting Factory, Enter The Dragon at Second Stage and Escalator, a performance piece for the renowned architects Diller & Scofidio at The Museum of Modern Art.
At The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute NY, where he has been on the faculty since 1998, he has directed John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi and a Shakespeare adaptation midnight’s dream as well as his original pieces Moist Tiny Elephants and Eveningland as well as acting in Romeo and Juliet and A Seagull in the Hamptons. He has taught Movement / Feldenkrais for The Tisch School for the Arts NYU, Strasberg LA, The School for Film and TV/NY and Fordham University at Lincoln Center. He is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner (2002-2006 training with David Zemach-Bersin, Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais’ 1st American student) He maintains a private coaching business in both NY, LA and London working with actors for Film and TV. Among his recent clients have been Adria Arjona (Andor, Hitman, Father of the Bride, Irma Vep) Leila George ( Animal Kingdom, He ain’t Heavy, Disclaimer) and Henry Garrett (Poldark, The Son, Dark Money, This England).