About

Kate PowersI make smart, thoughtful, entertaining, socially aware theatre. I love Shakespeare and Stoppard and really great words. I am dramaturgically prepared; my tablework is thorough; my productions are powerful. Tony and Olivier Award-winning playwright David Edgar says my resume is “scarily distinguished.”

My particular strengths lie with Elizabethan and Jacobean authors, and with new plays: I have a keen eye for what works and what does not in a new play, as well as strong dramaturgical skills when it comes to production research. I have directed plays from every century between the 16th and the 21st, both intense drama and raucous comedy; I like it best when they are combined in the same script.

Biography

In August 2011,  I directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the American Shakespeare Center for the 2011-2012 Almost Blasphemy tour.  In July 2011, I directed Becky’s New Car at Theatre Aspen, starring the incomparable Sandy Duncan and featuring Lawrence Lau, Heather Lee, David Ledingham, Jeffrey…

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Directing philosophy

Classic. Smart. Provocative. Truthful.

I direct kick-ass Shakespeare. I make smart, thoughtful, entertaining, socially aware theatre. I love Shakespeare and Stoppard and really great words. In addition to my classical experience, I have regularly worked on contemporary plays that explore issues of social justice and politics. I am dramaturgically…

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Wish list

I have a little bit of a ‘champion of the underdog’ in me, and look forward to producing and directing some of the great writers who have fallen, if not into the dustbin, at least onto the floor adjacent to history’s dustbin: writers such as Thomas Middleton and Rachel Crothers,…

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Latest Tweets

Too many people will always be after your theatre job (if you ever get one) for you to survive being lazy.
– David Ball

Tags

actor coaching actors American Shakespeare Center career building casting classic American plays contemporary plays directing process documentary theatre dramaturgy incarceration Irish Classical Theatre Company John Caird joy looking for work National Theatre new play new plays Noel Coward North Shore Music Theatre one-woman show producing rehabilitation Sandy Duncan Shakespeare shameless self-promotion Shaw social justice stage combat Steven Dietz student actors summerstock teaching text analysis textual analysis

You lie, in faith, for you are called plain Kate,
And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst;
But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom,
Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate,
For dainties are all Kates, and therefore, Kate,
Take this of me, Kate of my consolation…
--The Taming of the Shrew, Act II, scene i