Katie Kirk

Katie Kirk

Katie Kirk is a playwright & screenwriter originally from Northwest Indiana.

Most recently, their full-length feature screenplay The Thallium Murders won a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and was selected as a semifinalist for the Humanitas 2024 Carol Mendelsohn College Drama Award. Katie was also one of nine finalists in ABC Signature’s 2024 Emerging Playwright Initiative....
Katie Kirk is a playwright & screenwriter originally from Northwest Indiana.

Most recently, their full-length feature screenplay The Thallium Murders won a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and was selected as a semifinalist for the Humanitas 2024 Carol Mendelsohn College Drama Award. Katie was also one of nine finalists in ABC Signature’s 2024 Emerging Playwright Initiative.

Full-length plays include The Ninth Annual Hemlock Avenue Barbecue (Carnegie Mellon New Works), EGGMAN (Mary Marlin Fisher Playwriting Award), and Centripetal Force (NormalAve NAPSeries semifinalist, 2023). Katie’s short plays have been adapted for the screen and published by Concord Theatricals/Samuel French.

Their work's been staged or developed with organizations including Theater Masters, Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, the University of Kentucky, Kentucky Theatre Association, and The PlayGround Experiment, among others.

As an educator, Katie's worked with Horizon Theatre Company's New South Young Playwrights Festival, Carnegie Mellon University, Chicago Street Theatre, and the Leonard Gelfand Center.

Member: Dramatists Guild, Playwrights' Center

BA & MA, English — University of Kentucky

MFA, Dramatic Writing — Carnegie Mellon University

Plays

  • The Ninth Annual Hemlock Avenue Barbecue by Katie Kirk
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    7
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, horror + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: transmasculine, nonbinary lead + 3 more
    Genre: dark comedy, horror, tragedy
    Keyword: transmasculine, nonbinary lead, life in suburbia, adaptation, Seneca
    Corey's just bought a house in the suburbs, ready for a new start. Life's great! Except...Corey's next-door neighbor Adam has been harboring a grudge against his twin brother Thomas, and he'll stop at nothing to achieve retribution. Even if it tears the whole neighborhood apart.

    Loosely inspired by Seneca's grisly revenge play Thyestes, The Ninth Annual Hemlock Avenue...
    Corey's just bought a house in the suburbs, ready for a new start. Life's great! Except...Corey's next-door neighbor Adam has been harboring a grudge against his twin brother Thomas, and he'll stop at nothing to achieve retribution. Even if it tears the whole neighborhood apart.

    Loosely inspired by Seneca's grisly revenge play Thyestes, The Ninth Annual Hemlock Avenue Barbecue is part dark comedy, part bleak horror-tragedy—set in the most terrifying place imaginable: modern American suburbia.
  • EGGMAN by Katie Kirk
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    10–16
    ·
    Genre: comedy
    ·
    Keyword: the Beatles, the beach boys + 1 more
    Genre: comedy
    Keyword: the Beatles, the beach boys, a play within a play
    The community theatre’s putting on the worst play ever. The grad students are burned out. And—oh yeah, the Beatles broke up in 1966. With a little help from some questionable snake costumes, poorly-wielded stress balls, and the grandson of alternate-universe Ringo Starr, EGGMAN asks: can several unlikely collaborators “come together” to create meaningful work?
    Or, like the humble egg, will they…crack?
  • Centripetal Force by Katie Kirk
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: drama
    ·
    Keyword: siblings, family
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: siblings, family
    Three siblings, three parties, three moments in time. Katrin, Trix, and Maybel try to escape the orbit of their childhood home, but something keeps pulling them back. A play in three circles.
  • ONE HUNDRED BEES by Katie Kirk
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: Ten-Minute Play
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental, satire
    Keyword: Ten-Minute Play
    [TEN-MINUTE] The people on this stage love to BUY GOODS and WEAR MAKEUP and EAT CHEESEBURGER, just like you! Come experience the feeling of ONE HUNDRED BEES.

    [soon to be published by Concord Theatricals/Samuel French as part of Theater Masters' Take Ten anthology]
  • The Squirrel Watchers by Katie Kirk
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: Ten-Minute Play, college + 3 more
    Genre: comedy, drama
    Keyword: Ten-Minute Play, college, centers a LGBTQ character, hookups, Relationships
    [TEN-MINUTE] Alex got dumped by her long-term girlfriend. Brook's being ignored by the person she hooked up with. Chloe just wants to watch squirrels, you guys. The Squirrel Watchers Club is now in session.