Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia
Dunn, Katrina
Director, artistic director and producer, born and based in Vancouver British Columbia. Katrina Dunn trained in dance at Simon Fraser University and at the National Theatre School of Canada. She completed an MA in Theatre Studies at the University of British Columbia, and a PhD program in Theatre Studies at UBC, exploring the spatial manifestations of theatre in the downtown core of Vancouver: how they reflect the economic flows of capital and property in the city since 1950; and how they have impacted local urban and cultural landscapes, for which she was awarded a CSN-RÉC 2021 Best PhD Dissertation in Canadian Studies Prize. She also has taught acting at UBC and Studio 58. She is currently teaching in the Theatre Program at the University of Manitoba.
In 1989, she co-founded Ruby Slippers Theatre and was its first Artistic Director.
She was Artistic Director of Touchstone Theatre from 1997 to 2017. Her many directing credits for Touchstone include the premiere of Kevin Kerr’s Unity (1918); and plays by Jason Sherman, Michael Lewis MacLennan, Shawn Macdonald, Janet Munsil, Morwyn Brebner, and Vern Thiessen.
In 2003 she co-founded, with Norman Armour, the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. In 2005 she was an intern director of the Shaw Festival for five months, directing a production of In the Shadow of the Glen by J.M. Synge. In 2011 she co-created the bi-annual In Tune Conference with the Arts Club Theatre's Rachel Ditor.
Her many freelance directing credits include work for the Arts Club Theatre (A Christmas Story); Bard on the Beach (Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, Cymbeline; and Studio 58 (Attempts On Her Life, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, At the Black Pig's Dyke).
She has been nominated seven times for Jessie Richardson Awards in Outstanding Direction, and won twice: for Michael Healey's Kicked, and for Judith Thompson's Palace of the End. In 2010 she was awarded the Bra D'Or (Golden Bra) Award by the Women's Caucus of the Playwrights Guild of Canada for her promotion of the work of Canadian women playwrights.
Profile by Anne Nothof, Athabasca University
Last updated 2021-09-25
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