Brittany Vicars is an actress, filmmaker, artist and scholar. She attended The Juilliard School for Drama (Group 43) and was the recipient of the John Houseman Award for Excellence in Classical Theater. She received her Master’s in Biography and Memoir at The Graduate Center and is currently earning her doctorate in Theater and Performance Studies at City University of New York. She is a Lecturer in the Women's Studies Program and Theatre Arts Department in CUNY, and the English Department at the School of Visual Arts. She has written a memoir about her experience surviving cancer in the pandemic, forthcoming 2026. She has starred in theatrical productions in New York City and across the US, including over 300 performances of the Tony Award winning revival of 39 Steps, Electra in Iphigenia and Other Daughters, Hallie in Buried Child directed by Daniel Fish, and Ophelia in Tony Award Winning Director Darko Tresnjaks Hamlet at Hartford Stage. She has been featured on film and TV, Netflix “Liberty A Call To Spy,” NBC “FBI,” Evil, and the film Gazelle, directed by Nadir Sarıbacak and Samy Pioneer, will have its world premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival and its U.S. premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival in October 2025. Her debut feature film, “The Raging Heart of Maggie Acker,” will make its US premiere in 2026. She is the Executive Producer at 555 Films a New York City based Production house that creates commercials, narrative shorts and feature films. Her directorial debut je parle or dancing is his form of prayer, premiered on CUNYTV in 2024, her films explore poetic and experimental autobiographical themes.
Her scholarship examines women in autobiographical film and 20th–21st century systems of actor training through the lens of ethics, affect, disability, and trauma studies. It investigates how conservatory practices have framed the actor’s body as both instrument and site of vulnerability, tracing a genealogy from Early Modern Classical Schools, to Russian psychological realism and transnational experimental pedagogies. Central concerns include the tension between artistic surrender and self-preservation, the politics of emotion in training, and the evolving discourses of consent, embodiment, and care within institutional systems.