The director’s Role

  • My job is to create a space where the artists can produce their best work-- that calls for a certain level of nurturing, while also challenging the artists when needed. I should be a catalyst for their creative work.

  • I am the placeholder for the audience until there is one. I am a sounding board, and it is my job to communicate to the actors what I am seeing, and how I am interpreting their choices.

  • Although I am the leader of the artistic vision, I am more the editor than the creator. It is my responsibility to alter and collect the visions the writers, actors, and designers have for the piece into fruition in one cohesive concept.

Emily Russell, Playwright

“Kellie M. Beck is a superb director and nurturer of new works. They are the person I trust most with my emergent scripts, and I believe fully in the vision they bring to give the works life. Because of their whole-hearted approach to artmaking, Kellie is attuned to the emotions and needs of the entire artistic community in the shared creative process, incorporating intimacy directors and community talk-backs when scripts deal with traumatic or sensitive topics. Their conscientiousness stretches to everyone in the room, and anyone who may enter it. It is this level of care that Kellie brings both to the work and the people who will shape it that makes them a one-of-a-kind collaborator.”

Kieran Westphal, Actor

Rarely have I felt so free to experiment & play as when I'm working with Kellie. Actors in her rehearsal room are granted a wonderful sense of authorship over their work, and her commitment to collaboration encompasses every aspect of the theatrical machine. With her at the helm, the work of the whole company is electrified. To devise with Kellie is to create something that sticks with you forever.