Dramaturg, Director, Writer

Kate Pitt

 

Kate Pitt is a dramaturg, producer, writer, researcher, editor, and director.

A Stick-Figure Hamlet now on sale


Guthrie Theater

Chicago Opera Theater

Des Moines Metro Opera

Primary Stages

Shakespeare Theatre Company

The Acting Company

  • Associate Director, National Tour

  • Writer, Student Guides

    • Romeo and Juliet

      • …Shakespeare’s play unfolds over five hot summer days – Romeo and Juliet meet on Sunday night and are dead by Thursday morning – while Brooke’s poem unfolds over nine months and the lovers meet at a Christmas party… Brooke expands the story in places where Shakespeare stays silent, telling us what happens to the Nurse and Friar after the lovers’ deaths (she is banished and he becomes a hermit), and Shakespeare develops characters that Brooke only mentions in passing. Benvolio does not appear at all in Brooke’s poem and Mercutio appears only once as a party guest with very cold hands…

    • The Three Musketeers

      • Alexander Dumas moved to Paris in his 20s and quickly became a successful writer with the support of his late father’s friends. He wrote over 250 books in his lifetime and serialized many of his novels including The Three Musketeers in magazines…[his] prolific output was made possible by his collaborators who researched and wrote drafts for him to polish. Author Auguste Maquet wrote the first draft of The Three Musketeers, completed in 1844, as well as another of Dumas’ best known works, The Count of Monte Cristo, published the following year.

    • The Odyssey

      • Odysseus addresses the men…as “friends,” “companions,” and “servants.” …They are both sympathizers and servers, keeping Odysseus company on his journey while doing the physical labor to make it possible. Never once in all his desperate desire to return home does Odysseus ever actually touch an oar. He is willing to face many dangers – monsters, whirlpools, and witches – but not rowing. Ultimately it is Odysseus’ men, his “friends,” who suffer the most on his journey home. One by one they are bewitched, eaten, and drowned. Not one of them survives and when Odysseus finally arrives home, he arrives alone.

American Lyric Theater

Folger Shakespeare Library

The Reduced Shakespeare Company

Good Tickle Brain Comic


Program Notes

  • Pericles, Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival

    • Despite his best efforts, Pericles cannot always keep those closest to him safe or solve the great evils of his world. He and his family must fight against the forces of nature, humans, gods, and yes, pirates...

  • Così fan tutte, Santa Fe Opera

    • While writing Così, an opera that generalizes about the flirtatious behavior of all women (the title can be roughly translated as 'Thus do all women') Mozart may have had one particular woman in mind…

  • M. Butterfly, Santa Fe Opera

    • Since its premiere in 1988, David Henry Hwang’s play M. Butterfly has metamorphosed several times and exists in multiple editions – including two Broadway productions – and now as an opera. M. Butterfly’s opalescence is much like that of the creature itself: constantly revealing new facets as it shifts form and perspective…

  • The Barber of Seville, Opera Saratoga

    • When Barber finally premiered on February 23, 1775, audiences hated it. According to one of Beaumarchais’ friends, the public was exhausted by the play’s “superabundance of wit.” According to Beaumarchais, newspaper publishers were out to get him…

  • La Fille du Régiment, Opera Saratoga

    • Donizetti’s librettists for La Fille du Régiment – Jules-Henri Vernoy and Jean-François Bayard – were both talented artists and the authors of numerous successful plays. They also possessed sufficiently Gallic credentials to help the Italian composer win over notoriously difficult French audiences. Vernoy was particularly well-placed for this task: he was the manager of the Opéra-Comique theater in Paris where Fille was first performed...   

  • The Merry Widow, Opera Saratoga

    • There was almost a riot...when a producer offered free 'Merry Widow' hats…to every female audience member. 13,000 women showed up at the theater to claim 1,000 hats, and The New York Times reported that one patron 'tackled the woman next to her with a vim that would have done credit to the world's champion female wrestler…’

  • Ellen West, Opera Saratoga

    • Ellen cares for her disease in a way she is unable to care for herself. She nurtures her hunger, preserving and guarding it against those who would seek to sate it. While her body wastes away, her appetite grows and becomes literally all-consuming. Ellen believes that her true self is thin, and that by keeping her belly empty, she may will her self full. She is her own whetstone and wears herself away – body, heart, and soul…


“Character Studies: Portraying Shakespeare's Richard III in Word and Image” at the Yale University Art Gallery. Directed by Kate Pitt & Bonnie Antosh. Photo by Jessica Smolinski.