Kathryn Grant

Kathryn Grant

Kathryn Grant studied acting at the Juilliard School and pursued a career in the theater, acting in over 100 plays in New York and around the country. She began writing as a member of the American Renaissance Theater workshop where artists are encouraged to explore all areas in the theater. Her first full-length play, The Wound of Love, received the Berilla Kerr Award in playwriting and went on to full...
Kathryn Grant studied acting at the Juilliard School and pursued a career in the theater, acting in over 100 plays in New York and around the country. She began writing as a member of the American Renaissance Theater workshop where artists are encouraged to explore all areas in the theater. Her first full-length play, The Wound of Love, received the Berilla Kerr Award in playwriting and went on to full productions at the Actors Studio, Penguin Repertory Theater, the John Houseman Studio Theater and Provincetown Repertory Theater. Alvin Klein writing for the New York Times said of her work, "She writes with astounding tenderness ... I wouldn't trade her flair for a first encounter. Not for the whole real world on a plate." Her play, Wonderful Counselor was presented in developmental workshops and readings at the Barrow Group Theater, Ensemble Studio Theater, Urban Stages, The Actors Studio Playwright and Director's Unit, the Abingdon Theater and LAByrinth Theater's Summer Intensive. Revised and retitled as The Good Counselor, it garnered The Jerry Kaufman Award in Playwriting and The 2010 Premiere Stages Festival Award. In the summer of 2010, John Wooten directed a full production of this play as part of the Premiere Stages season. She consequently won a 2011 citation from The Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for the same play. Her play Handicapped People in Their Formal Attire received a workshop production at the Actor’s Studio and received a full production at Premiere Stages as part of winning the 2012 Premiere Stages Festival Award.

Other plays include The Alabaster Virgin, The Khmer Shiva, Alijah and The House of Piñatas. They have been featured in Ensemble Theater's Octoberfest, the Actors Studio Playwright and Director's Unit and the American Renaissance Theater's Spring Series. Her screenplay, The Practice Room is in development. She received her Doctorate in the writing program at Drew University. She teaches acting and writing for performance at St. Francis College and for Broadway Teachers Workshop and Broadway Student Summit. She served on the Board of the American Renaissance Theater Company and currently heads the admission committee for the Actors Studio Playwright and Director’s Unit. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, actor and director, Ed Setrakian. Her son, musician Ilya Setrakian is a rising talent currently working out of Philadelphia.

Plays

  • Aliyah
    Aliyah, approaching middle age without purpose or direction, joins a new-age, multi-cultural church that meets in an old, abandoned theater. Through the church’s central tenet of “the oneness of all creation,” she finds the serenity and strength to get her life moving forward. She becomes involved in the Church’s outreach activities, volunteering in a shelter and planning to adopt through the church's...
    Aliyah, approaching middle age without purpose or direction, joins a new-age, multi-cultural church that meets in an old, abandoned theater. Through the church’s central tenet of “the oneness of all creation,” she finds the serenity and strength to get her life moving forward. She becomes involved in the Church’s outreach activities, volunteering in a shelter and planning to adopt through the church's program to unite parents with children. At the same time, she realizes her dream of publishing quality books. Everything is finally falling into place. But when a shelter client brutally attacks her to within an inch of her life, she is thrown into a new world of connection. This is not what Aliyah expected when she took on faith the Church’s promise of the “oneness of all creation.” In Hebrew, Aliyah means “one who travels to a higher place.” Can Aliyah absorb her new reality without giving up on the promise her name implies?
  • The House of Piñatas
    Dabney Hutchins, a 35-year-old man living in the Poconos has a good life. He is a popular and beloved figure in the many organizations that make up the civic life in the Poconos. He works as a desk clerk for the Red Roof Inn, he volunteers as an EMT and sells the great folk art of the Poconos on his website, Dabney's Pocono Treasures. Only one thing. His mom, Judy is not happy with the fact that he may...
    Dabney Hutchins, a 35-year-old man living in the Poconos has a good life. He is a popular and beloved figure in the many organizations that make up the civic life in the Poconos. He works as a desk clerk for the Red Roof Inn, he volunteers as an EMT and sells the great folk art of the Poconos on his website, Dabney's Pocono Treasures. Only one thing. His mom, Judy is not happy with the fact that he may be gay. Or let's just say that he is not straight. So Judy convinces him to try out Living Waters, a "reparative therapy" operation that just put out its shingle. In an abandoned mall in the Poconos, in the old "House of Piñatas," newly minted Living Waters' therapist, Dr. Margaret Fullerton, leads her clients through an identity-bleaching process as her mentor, Dr. Charles Harbison, watches behind a two-way mirror. But their latest client, Dabney fails to get it, so the therapists pull out all the stops in a ritualistic Aztec ceremony designed to purge the urge vis-à-vis some carefully orchestrated whacks of the piñata stick. But when Dabney's high school crush and his mother show up for this bizarre coming of age ritual, things become unhinged and a full-out brawl ensues. When the smoke clears, the masks have fallen away, the operators are revealed and the stage is set for new beginnings for all the players.
  • The Khmer Shiva
    The Khmer Shiva examines the fallout from sexual profiteering in a world where feminism intersects with globalization run amok. The play takes place in a cliff-top home by the ocean where international entrepreneurial cowboy, Richard Fallon, lives with his on-again, off-again mistress, Terri. His daughter, Mia, a “social justice junkie” comes to visit from a university conference with her new friend, Chan, a...
    The Khmer Shiva examines the fallout from sexual profiteering in a world where feminism intersects with globalization run amok. The play takes place in a cliff-top home by the ocean where international entrepreneurial cowboy, Richard Fallon, lives with his on-again, off-again mistress, Terri. His daughter, Mia, a “social justice junkie” comes to visit from a university conference with her new friend, Chan, a Cambodian woman she met there. Chan seeks funding for her grassroots female empowerment organization. Chan intrigues Richard. He’s impressed by the way she manages to keep his volatile daughter focused and purposeful. But he has another motive for currying favor with Chan. He spent many years in Cambodia before his lumber business there faltered. Now he has a new venture, precious stone mining. With Chan’s credibility in the international community, she might help him to gain the licensing to drill in coveted virgin mountain territory in Cambodia. And he might find a way through Chan to revive his relationship with his distant and angry daughter. But as the night wears on, and a storm rages, cutting off power, things happen that call Chan’s credibility into question.

    In his living room, Richard displays a statue of Shiva, the Hindu deity known both as a destroyer and a transformer. As Shiva presides over this group of people whose fates have intertwined in mysterious ways in this isolated and beautiful home on a cliff, relationships are both destroyed and transformed in one devastating collision with truth.
  • Aliyah
    Aliyah, approaching middle age without purpose or direction, joins a new-age, multi-cultural church that meets in an old, abandoned theater. Through the church’s central tenet of “the oneness of all creation,” she finds the serenity and strength to get her life moving forward. She becomes involved in the Church’s outreach activities, volunteering in a shelter and planning to adopt through the church's...
    Aliyah, approaching middle age without purpose or direction, joins a new-age, multi-cultural church that meets in an old, abandoned theater. Through the church’s central tenet of “the oneness of all creation,” she finds the serenity and strength to get her life moving forward. She becomes involved in the Church’s outreach activities, volunteering in a shelter and planning to adopt through the church's program to unite parents with children. At the same time, she realizes her dream of publishing quality books. Everything is finally falling into place. But when a shelter client brutally attacks her to within an inch of her life, she is thrown into a new world of connection. This is not what Aliyah expected when she took on faith the Church’s promise of the “oneness of all creation.” In Hebrew, Aliyah means “one who travels to a higher place.” Can Aliyah absorb her new reality without giving up on the promise her name implies?
  • The Good Counselor
    Evelyn Laverty stands accused of killing her baby. The assigned lawyer, Vincent Heffernan, normally adept, finds himself struggling with her defense, even as his mother and his church-centered, African-American community call for her harsh punishment. Evelyn is a difficult client and Vincent loses compassion as she becomes increasingly more resistant to his efforts to discover the truth and mount a defense....
    Evelyn Laverty stands accused of killing her baby. The assigned lawyer, Vincent Heffernan, normally adept, finds himself struggling with her defense, even as his mother and his church-centered, African-American community call for her harsh punishment. Evelyn is a difficult client and Vincent loses compassion as she becomes increasingly more resistant to his efforts to discover the truth and mount a defense. Adding to the static, Vincent’s brother Ray, a recovering addict, falls off the wagon once again. And when Vincent and Evelyn edge ever closer to the truth about her son’s death, Vincent confronts some similarly difficult truths about his mother. As he comes to see how poverty and isolation complicated Evelyn’s mothering choices, he must also come to terms with the ways his mother managed her family in similar circumstances.