Kathleen identifies as a “story catcher.” There is no telling what will catch in her imagination: History, social justice, contemporary social practices, ice fishing . . . . She has written close to fifty plays, fifteen of which are full lengths. While women-centered stories are a major focus of her work, she has also written prolifically for children’s theatre. A wellwritten play or story is like a time machine, and Kathleen is a frequent traveler. She is currently working on a commissioned piece celebrating the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage. A special interest is labor history, and she jumped at a commission by the AFL-CIO of MN to write about the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, produced for the organization’s 100th anniversary. Shortly after, a short play about the tenement strikes in NYC followed: “A Roof over Every Head,” which was performed at the Metropolitan Playhouse in NYC. Her full-length Companeras is based on actual “testimonios” of political, women prisoners in Uruguay during that country’s “dirty war”. This play was named the Larry Corse International New Play winner (2011) and produced at Columbus State and was named an ATHE New Play winner. Some of Kathleen’s other work was developed at Fullerton College and FutureFest in Dayton, OH (Trees), and St. Bette’s was performed at NYU’s Stella Adler Inst. – NYU, and Bridgewater State College.
In recent years, Kathleen has been creating pieces for puppets (for both adult and youth audiences) and apprenticed at Bread and Puppet in VT (summer, 2017) and developed a large-scale puppet pageant: World Peace Pageant (Sept. ’18) in her hometown of Grand Forks, ND. This work stems from an interest in developing community through theatre. In winter, 2016, she took a weekend intensive at Cornerstone Theatre in Los Angeles and looks forward to applying practices she learned there to a new piece about
homelessness in North Dakota. The piece will be site specific, something she’s wanted to explore for years.
Kathleen has also written a novel, Wannabe (Creative Arts Books, Berkeley), and been a semi-finalist for the prestigious Nicholl's screenwriting award for her script Shrimp Po’boy.