Kate Douglas

Kate Douglas

Kate Douglas is a writer, composer, and performer.

Recent work includes The Apiary (2024 World Premiere at Second Stage), Tulipa (NYSCA Grant, 2024), Hag with Grace McLean (Vivace Award, 2023), The Lucky Few starring opposite her co-writer Todd Almond (Ancram Opera House), and The Ninth Hour starring opposite her co-writer Shayfer James (The Met Cloisters).

Her work has been...
Kate Douglas is a writer, composer, and performer.

Recent work includes The Apiary (2024 World Premiere at Second Stage), Tulipa (NYSCA Grant, 2024), Hag with Grace McLean (Vivace Award, 2023), The Lucky Few starring opposite her co-writer Todd Almond (Ancram Opera House), and The Ninth Hour starring opposite her co-writer Shayfer James (The Met Cloisters).

Her work has been developed at Millay Arts, New Victory Theater, Recording Academy Musical Theatre Mentorship, Dramatist Guild Foundation Fellows Program, SPACE on Ryder Farm, The Civilians R&D Group, Rhinebeck Musicals, the Writer’s Colony at Goodspeed, and the New Musicals Lab at the Ferguson Center.

She is an alumna of Colt Coeur, Dramatist Guild Fellows, The Civilians R&D Group, The Orchard Project Greenhouse and Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project.

She is currently a member of the BMI Musical Theatre Writing Workshops and signed with Kobalt Music Publishing.

She has over eight years of experience creating, writing and directing immersive, multidisciplinary events as Associate Artist at The McKittrick Hotel, home of SLEEP NO MORE, where she was also a performer.

As a complement to her artistic practice, she studies bodywork and plants.

Plays

  • The Apiary by Kate Douglas
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    4
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    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 1 more
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    Keyword: bees, global warming + 3 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, science fiction
    Keyword: bees, global warming, environment, climate change, cli-fi
    22 years in the future, two lab assistants hatch a plan that could change the world. All they need are a few volunteers. A raucous and provocative comedy by Kate Douglas about sacrifice, ambition, and honeybees.
  • Tulipa by Kate Douglas
    Cast: 
    1
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 3 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, fable/folktale, period
    There was a brief moment in the 17th century when a plant could ruin your life.

    The scentless, upright, almost aloof flower - the tulip - nearly toppled its economy and turned a stable society on its head. Tulips became a luxury item, with the highest prices going towards “broken” bulbs, infected by a virus that “broke” the petal colors into two or more.

    Tulipa is a monologue set...
    There was a brief moment in the 17th century when a plant could ruin your life.

    The scentless, upright, almost aloof flower - the tulip - nearly toppled its economy and turned a stable society on its head. Tulips became a luxury item, with the highest prices going towards “broken” bulbs, infected by a virus that “broke” the petal colors into two or more.

    Tulipa is a monologue set against this Dionysian backdrop: a riches to rags story about a widow in Holland who loses everything in the name of tulips…and a man. Tulipa asks: how we can find what truly nourishes us in a world gone mad?
  • Castor & Pollux & the humans that ate them by Kate Douglas
    Cast: 
    6–7
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, fable/folktale + 5 more
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    Keyword: environment, absurd farce
    Genre: dark comedy, fable/folktale, farce, parody/spoof, period, satire, tragedy
    Keyword: environment, absurd farce
    An absurdist adaptation of the myth Castor & Pollux set in some kind of American wilderness. It's an outrageous and perverted look at the Manifest Destiny breed of relating to our inner and outer landscapes, leaving room to imagine how we might compost that relationship into something else.
  • Wonderland by Kate Douglas
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    5
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    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 2 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, horror
    Wonderland explores the anguish and ecstasy of women's anger in two parts. Part One is set in a dystopian 'anger management' rehab for women to help heal them of their rage and "get control of their lives." Part Two is set in an outlandishly monied suburb where omnipresent violence is entirely normalized.
  • Against Women & Music! (co-write with Grace McLean) by Kate Douglas
    Cast: 
    7
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 7 more
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    Keyword: Victorian supernatural
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, farce, horror, melodrama, musical, mystery/thriller, period, satire
    Keyword: Victorian supernatural
    Against Women & Music! is an absurdist-horror Victorian chamber musical. Celine is a widow emerging from a year of mourning following her husband’s death and grappling with her peculiar daughter Geneva’s debut into high society. When the doctor prescribes Geneva piano lessons to “finesse her emotional intelligence,” Celine discovers a sinister presence has possessed her daughter.

    Book &...
    Against Women & Music! is an absurdist-horror Victorian chamber musical. Celine is a widow emerging from a year of mourning following her husband’s death and grappling with her peculiar daughter Geneva’s debut into high society. When the doctor prescribes Geneva piano lessons to “finesse her emotional intelligence,” Celine discovers a sinister presence has possessed her daughter.

    Book & Lyrics by Kate Douglas
    Music & Lyrics by Grace McLean
  • The Lucky Few (co-write with Todd Almond) by Kate Douglas
    Cast: 
    18–30
    ·
    Genre: drama, musical + 1 more
    Genre: drama, musical, period
    The Lucky Few is an intimate play with music about two strangers from different generations grappling with nostalgia, expectation and cheap cigarettes. On New Year’s Eve 1959, a war veteran and a singer meet at a VFW Dance. After both are left stranded when their pasts catch up with them, the two pass the night in the empty dance hall discussing what happens now.

    A Play With Music by Todd Almond & Kate Douglas
  • Hold, Please by Kate Douglas
    Cast: 
    1
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    Genre: experimental, immersive + 1 more
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    Keyword: telephone
    Genre: experimental, immersive, radio drama
    Keyword: telephone
    “Hold, Please,” is an enlivening exploration of stasis and boredom as a gateway to the extraordinary.

    This show uses an automated phone system as a platform. Players can call in at any time of day to begin the experience (multiple experiences are possible), guided by an automated voice.

    The story opens with a description of the protagonist, on hold, waiting. As the story...
    “Hold, Please,” is an enlivening exploration of stasis and boredom as a gateway to the extraordinary.

    This show uses an automated phone system as a platform. Players can call in at any time of day to begin the experience (multiple experiences are possible), guided by an automated voice.

    The story opens with a description of the protagonist, on hold, waiting. As the story progresses, the player is confronted with multiple possibilities and makes choices using the phone keypad. These instructions and prompts ultimately invite players to arrive more mindfully in their own immediate environment, break their patterns and PLAY.

    As we enter a full year of pause, “Hold, Please” asks: what can we learn inside of ambiguity, inside of “not knowing”, inside of waiting?
  • The Ninth Hour (co-write with Shayfer James) by Kate Douglas
    Cast: 
    5–60
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, musical + 1 more
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    Keyword: Beowulf, operetta + 2 more
    Genre: adaptation, musical, opera
    Keyword: Beowulf, operetta, rock, movement
    Inspired by Beowulf, one of the oldest works in the Western canon, The Ninth Hour explores the intricacies of mankind's relationship with power and violence.

    A hero, summoned to be a protector against a relentless enemy, must confront the evil within herself as a monster comes to terms with the agony of isolation at his life's end.

    Book, music & lyrics by Kate Douglas & Shayfer James
  • Middlemist Red by Kate Douglas
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: adventure, immersive + 1 more
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    Keyword: ecology, environment + 1 more
    Genre: adventure, immersive, young audiences
    Keyword: ecology, environment, tya
    Middlemist Red aims to reconnect children of the digital age with the importance of conservation through an immersive, analog mystery experience. The adventure begins in the classroom, when a visiting botanist comes to teach a workshop on the themes of interdependence, recycling, and sustainability. She tells children about the secret history of a rare flower in a botanical library nearby that used to be...
    Middlemist Red aims to reconnect children of the digital age with the importance of conservation through an immersive, analog mystery experience. The adventure begins in the classroom, when a visiting botanist comes to teach a workshop on the themes of interdependence, recycling, and sustainability. She tells children about the secret history of a rare flower in a botanical library nearby that used to be maintained by a secret society. When children visit the library in person, they discover that the flower has gone missing. On the journey to find the plant, audiences uncover the story of the Middlemist Society and the mission of a gardener who is trying to stop even more plants from disappearing.
  • An Infinite Progression by Kate Douglas
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 1 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama
    Through an embezzling scheme that is stranger than fiction, An Infinite Progression explores the absurdity and violence of human greed.
  • Extinct by Kate Douglas
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 2 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, immersive, satire
    Welcome to AllCorp, where productivity is touted as the key to happiness, a strange infestation of plants is growing up through people’s desks, and no one stops to wonder why. This immersive dance theater work transports audience members to a dystopian workplace that feels uncannily familiar in its exploration of what we are killing to make a killing.