Biography

Billy has created and directed original plays in all kinds of venues, including homeless shelters, community centers, and public and private schools.
He has created and mastered a technique he uses with children and adults called Improvisational Integrated Music & Drama (IIMD).
He has worked with many well-known artists, sung national commercials for T.V. and radio, and performed cartoon voices internationally for the Fox TV
network. Billy holds a Masters Degree in Special Education and is a certified teacher.

Billy Ayres specializes in improvisational musical theater with special needs children and adults. He has extensive experience in his approach that integrates many methods and forms of expression in theater arts: writing original plays and songs, improvisational acting and performances, movement, comedy, and mime. He is an artist-in-residence who has created, directed and performed more than fifty original musicals with special needs children and adults, at the Northern Westchester Center for the Arts, The Greenwich Youth Stage, Northern Westchester Boces, Norwest, and for Ability Beyond Disability, a rehabilitation facility where his work with traumatic brain injury victims received high praise by the New York Times. He conducts his workshops in a broad array of settings, from the theater, to the classroom, to community homeless shelters. His has received high acclaim in the Journal News for his work at the Westchester Arts Council, and has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Billy is a published songwriter who has sung many national commercials for T.V. and radio, performing with Ben Vereen and Michael Bolton. He is developing a series of children’s books for special needs children and adults entitled “The Tiger and the Butterfly,” and has published “How to Conduct a Residency” for the Westchester Arts Council. He is a trained percussionist and a self-taught pianist and guitarist. He has created numerous cartoon voices for Fox 5’s children’s television show “Vanpires” both nationally and internationally. He is currently a staff writer for The Songs of Love foundation, donating original songs for children with terminal illness. He has been the host and emcee of “Very Special Arts,” a showcase of special needs talent held at the Northern Westchester Center for the Arts.

Billy Ayres holds a B.S. in psychology, is a member of the Screen Actors Guild and Aftra, and is currently working toward a dual certification in special education and elementary education.

Program Topics

Through techniques developed in Improvisational Integrated Music and Drama (IIMD), any variation of the following workshops or presentations can be made.

Using music and drama to express and to show talents that may be inside waiting to be explored. Including telling stories of how to create original plays and musicals, using improvisational techniques.
The magic of music-music is a language-making music – anyone can make music, songwriting, rhythm, singing, and creating original plays and music.

Performances

Out of Order and unresolved Stories: an original work directed by Billy Ayres featuring Westchester Network for Disabled Adults TBI (traumatic brain injury victims) from “Ability beyond Disability” perform, tell stories, and speak and share their stories.

Teacher Workshops: alternate forms of education, exploring abstractions and concrete operations, and the bridges and transitions to both. How concrete operations can occur in the arts while increasing self-esteem and awareness-exploring talent.

” The students who interacted with Billy on a more personal level truly benefited from the knowledge and advice he shared. As our keynote speaker, his messages were very well received. He spoke of making connections in life, letting go of fear, grudges and insecurities and not being hung up on what you can’t do, but what you can do to make a difference in your own life or in others. I have no doubt that the affect he had on our students will be positive and lasting. —Kerry McLaughlin, V.P. of Education, Intrepid Sea, Air, Space Museum              

“Over at the Adult Day Habilitation Program, we have been thunderstruck by one Billy Ayres. Billy is a professional who decided a number of years ago to dedicate his life to working with the disabled. Billy has been a DayHab for the past three months and has our clients singing, dancing, acting-you can’t believe it!!! The two hours Mr. Ayres spend with our gang each week are easily the highlight of the adult program for both our clients and our staff. It is truly heartwarming stuff and quite a few administrative staff can be found coincidentally taking their breaks at DayHab during Billy’s working hours.” – Jack Shaw, The Hawthorne Foundation, Hawthorne, NY