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 Correia, Autumn Hurlbert, and Ted Pejovich.  Under the auspices of Rehabilitation Through the Arts, I directed Tracy Letts’ Superior Donuts at Sing Sing Correctional Facility; we performed the play for the general population and for an invited civilian audience in May.

Since mid-2009, I have worked as a facilitator, teacher and director with Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) at Sing Sing, a maximum-security prison north of New York City. In addition to collaborating with Jeff Glaser on his production of Starting Over in spring 2010, I have team-taught two directing workshops at the prison.

In July 2009, I directed John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, a parable at Weathervane Theatre in Whitefield, NH. During 2009, I also earned a Certificate in Arts Administration from New York University’s School of Continuing Education and consulted on the strategic planning for a new theatre company in the American West. In 2008, I directed Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Dell’arte Opera Ensemble’s Standard Repertoire Project and taught master classes to the singers on working with Shakespeare’s text.

My production of The Winter’s Tale opened July 6, 2007 at the American Shakespeare Center and played in repertory on the Blackfriars’ stage through early December 2007. The Staunton News Leader wrote “The current American Shakespeare Center production of “The Winter’s Tale,” directed by Kathleen Powers, is the finest I have seen at Blackfriars Playhouse.”

In March 2007, I directed Twelfth Night for the Richmond Shakespeare Theatre.

In November 2006, I returned to the North Shore Music Theatre to direct Jon Kimbell’s A Christmas Carol, A Musical Ghost Story, at the North Shore Music Theatre, in Beverly, MA. In September, I directed Amy de Lucia in her one-woman adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s Fräulein Else at Theatre Five in New York.

In 2005, I directed Measure for Measure on the Kansas City Rep. mainstage for the University of Missouri at Kansas City Graduate Acting Program. I also lost my apartment and most of my belongings to a fire late in the year; this displaced directing as my priority for several months.

In November / December 2004, I directed Julius Caesar at the Juilliard School; because this was a project for the students in the second year of the Drama School, performances were not open to the public. The emphasis was on putting the language to work to explore character and storytelling; the production was very much ‘poor theatre.’ In April / May, I directed Noël Coward’s Private Lives at the Irish Classical Theatre Company in Buffalo, New York. In January, I directed Emily Mann’s Execution of Justice on the Babcock Stage at the Pioneer Theatre in Salt Lake City, in commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the murders of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk by Supervisor Dan White. The production closed February 7, 2004.

In the autumn of 2003, I directed the Royal National Theatre’s UK Tour of Charlotte Jones’ Humble Boy in London. The production featured Hayley Mills, Brigit Forsyth, John Burgess, Paul Hecht, Hugh Sachs and Carla Lang; it played to 99% capacity houses throughout the United Kingdom from October 1 through December 6, 2003. Also in 2003, I directed The Taming of the Shrew at North Shore Music Theatre, in Beverly, Massachusetts and served as associate director to John Caird on the American premiere of Humble Boy at Manhattan Theatre Club.

I was a 2001-2002 Fulbright Scholar. In December 2002, I received my M.A. with Distinction in Shakespeare at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, which is part of the English Department at the University of Birmingham.

If you are would like to see a sample of my work at the Institute, click on one of the following links:

• Talking Amiss of Her: Speech, Silence and Shrewishness in The Taming of the Shrew
• Open Stage to Empty Space: The Granville-Barker Inheritance

Prior to my Fulbright year, I directed As You Like It at Playhouse on the Square in Memphis, TN and worked with graduate student playwrights at the NYU/Tisch Dramatic Writing Program, which I continue to do. In the fall of 2000, I directed Pieces, written and performed by Zohar Tirosh, for a limited run at the Blue Heron Arts Center in New York. I have directed Twelfth Night at Otterbein College in Columbus, Ohio and How I Learned to Drive at the Penobscot Theatre in Bangor, Maine. A member of SDC and a former Drama League Directing Fellow, I created Some Other Shakespeare (S.O.S.) with performers Frank Bradley and Seana Lee Wyman in 1996. We produced and I directed Much Ado about Nothing and Twelfth Night in New York City vest-pocket parks. I have directed productions at several off-off-Broadway venues as well as at Connecticut Repertory Theatre at UCONN, Trinity College (Hartford) and with Exiles Theatre at the University of Ulster in Coleraine, Northern Ireland.

I have been fortunate enough to assist some of the people whom I respect and admire most in this business. As the 1998-99 Directing Assistant at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ, I assisted David Leveaux on his production of Sophocles’ Electra, featuring Zoë Wanamaker, Claire Bloom, Pat Carroll, Michael Cumpsty, Marin Hinkle and Stephen Spinella. I assisted Mr. Leveaux when we transferred Electra to Broadway, where it received three Tony Award nominations. I assisted Emily Mann on the world premiere of her play Meshugah; I assisted Brian Kulick on the world premiere of Nilo Cruz’s Two Sisters and a Piano. I assisted Stephen Wadsworth on his effervescent production of Noël Coward’s Design for Living, which was a co-production with Seattle Rep.