The name ‘gracemoon’ metaphorically speaks to the major tenets of the Company’s practice and way of approaching the art of acting. The word ‘grace’ is a word to help the actors approach a character at its deepest level and ‘moon’ speaks to surrendering to the things I cannot explain.

Acting changes lives. At Gracemoon, we experience it daily. Over the past 25 years, Michèle Lonsdale•Smith, a 1980’s alum of the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute NY, has developed acting exercises and further evolved traditional techniques to help actors be more truthful. The proof is in the depth of storytelling she and her Company create time after time.

Gracemoon came to inception in 2017, as a love letter to the students that train with Michèle, providing an autonomous home where they could drive their artistic projects. The company has since produced a myriad of projects, spanning writing, acting, and directing on film and in theatre. What started as training in expanding the understanding of an art form, has evolved into a modality that can help on a broader humanitarian scale. Word of the training and modality spread internationally, and an Italian actor watching the work encouraged Michèle and the company to bring the study to Italy. We’ve never left. The European love of the labratorial style investigation to understanding human behavior in the way we act, to act, has deepened our work. The Italian company was born.

At Gracemoon, we believe art is a humanitarian pursuit. It’s our mission to understand the truths of our humanity at the deepest levels, then report back in storytelling to our community and to the world. Gracemoon became a 501(c)3 organization in 2024 and opened its first theatre later that year, bringing the members and their work to the most diverse city in the world: New York. The Mecca of theatre.

The theatre offered a space where people come together to converse on the nature of the human condition through the art of acting. A slate of four well-known plays, directed by Michèle Lonsdale-Smith and unified by sociocultural matter, brought the spirit of real, cinematic, and disturbing acting back to the skin of NY theatre. After each show, a moderated conversation engaged the audience and the cast in deeply honest dialogue. A personal & critical thought conversation about what was just experienced using our actual process. A theatre, a company, an audience and a methodology for those who want to know themselves at the bottom.

Today, the theatre has moved from Brooklyn with an anticipated residency in Manhattan and Rome in the Fall of 2026. The NY and Rome company operate as one international community. Raw, real and intimate theatre elevated to unbridled unity. Toyer by Gardner McKay, debuted with raving reviews in May 2026 prompting a discussion of our first touring play. The instructors and board continue to grow. Gracemoon breathes in the way we act and live. An international home for the artist. A way of life for our communities to feel less alone.

Welcome to our home.