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Weiss, Kathleen

Theatre director dramaturge, and educator, born in 1951. She has a BFA from the University of New Mexico and an MFA from the University of British Columbia.

She founded the Vancouver branch of Theatresports, and was the Artistic Director of the Women in View Festival for seven years. In 1986 she was Artistic Director of Tamahnous Theatre where she directed the celebrated Haunted House Hamlet (by Peter Elliott Weiss, her husband), during which the audience was invited to follow certain characters away from Shakespeare's text. This production was featured at the Festival de Théâtre des Amériques (now Festival TransAmériques) in Montreal in 1986. While at Tamahnous she also encouraged women playwrights and artists (notably with the production of Neverland, an adaptation of the Peter Pan story, led by choreographer Jennifer Mascall).

She has directed for most of the major Vancouver theatres and has taught acting and directing at many theatre schools. She is currently an Associate Professor and Chair of the Drama Department at the University of Alberta.

Recent directing credits include: Shoe, a new play by Elaine Avila staged in an Edmonton shoe store, which charts the shift in power between a demanding, haughty employer and a timid sales girl; and a sexually charged, claustrophobic production of Hedda Gabler, staged in Edmonton's Rutherford House, the home of Alberta's first Premier (1905), for an audience of fifteen which followed the action from room to room.

In March 2016, she directed the premiere of The Kaufmann Kabaret by Hannah Moscovitch at the University of Alberta's Studio Theatre.

Profile by Anne Nothof, Athabasca University

Last updated 2016-03-24