About
Kate McLeod is a playwright, lyricist, librettist, author, and former journalist.
Kate is the author of more than two dozen plays which have been performed in the Northeast around the U.S., in London, and Sri Lanka. Her work was performed at New Jersey Rep, New York Theater Winterfest, The Noor Festival, Emerging Artists Theatre, and The Flea. Kate is a member of The Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive. She was a participant in the Last Frontier Theatre Conference the final year Edward Albee hosted it. Her play, Dad’s Arrival, was one of five that had a public reading with all of the conference lecturers in attendance, including (Yes it was Wow!) Tony Kushner, Edward Albee, Romulus Linney, Lloyd Richards, Mell Gussow who participated in the talk back. Dad’s Arrival has had two staged readings in addition to the reading in Alaska.
Kate produced The First and Only Bacon Theatre festival in New York City, where One Weird Trick, a five-minute opera written by McLeod and composer Rob Hartmann debuted (It’s on YouTube). She was commissioned to write a site-specific play for the 150th anniversary of the Lincoln Funeral Train. She has used her skills to assist at-risk girls in telling their story in dramatic form and has coached TEDx speakers to tell their story in an emotional and personal way. As a reporter, Kate has worked at leading magazines cover health, automotive, and travel. Her reporter skills have informed her work as a playwright. She received her MFA from Catholic University.
Currently, Kate is writing a musical with composer Megan Cavallari. They are working towards a reading in 2025. She served on the board of The League of Professional Theatre Women and is now on the membership committee. She has been on the board of The Overseas Press Club Foundation, which awards nineteen scholarships/internships to applicants who want to report on international stories, for over 15 years. A scholarship, which she raised all funds for, is named after her late husband Jerry Flint.
Acknowledgements
Residencies:
Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023,2024
Resident playwright, America-In-Play, NY, NY 2008-10
Playwriting Residency, Ledig House, Ghent, NY 2006
Playwriting Residency Jentel Artist Residency Program, Banner, WY, 2005
Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Valdez, AK, 2004 (Featured Artists Include: Tony Kushner, Edward Albee, Romulus Linney, and John Guare; actors Patricia Neal, Courtney B. Vance, Joel Vig, and Marian Seldes; and Mel Gussow and Lloyd Richards)
Select Honors
Michael Irvin Pollard was voted best storyteller when he performed my monologue, By The Light, at United Solo in October 2022.
HolyMarriageDotCom was a finalist in The Secret Theatre's One Act Festival July/August 2022.
Artist Statement
My mother boiled the life out of every vegetable when I was a kid. I was a kid once. I’m still a kid, but I roast my vegetables and we now use olive oil.
If you are surprised there was a time when we didn’t have olive oil, you must be in your twenties. Which I am not. I think of myself as a late, late bloomer. But what I actually am is a life-long learner so I am never sure if I have perfected a piece of theatre that I have written, worked on, struggled over. It’s constant. And anyone who is a writer knows what I am talking about.
But it’s here to stay. This is what I do. This is what I have done for as long as I could think. As a kid I created little dramas and my characters had accents (Don’t ask me because I have no idea.) and I would perform them in a linen closet which was at the top of the back staircase.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m always on the back staircase and maybe I’m just fine with that. It had a landing. It is where I taught myself to fly. Yes, I did. So then I went to the front staircase, which did not have a landing, took off and ended up at the bottom, having knocked myself out. OK, you say. And I say back, I did not learn to fly.
But I write about the process of learning to fly. I observe others in their attempts to fly. To live. I watch, eavesdrop, and listen when I am afforded the privilege. I note and make light and dark the misunderstanding, awkward communication filled with the fears we accumulate into one big bundle that lives on our shoulders. I can’t help noting the self-obsession and arrogance. It’s so . . . human. Right? But I write with compassion. Otherwise how are we ever going to understand one another. What I love to do is simplify the wrong turns, the misgivings, the fractured sense of self and build a character, a world, a mountain of sorrow or hope.
If we live through the small moments can we get to something bigger? If we see how others live can we learn how to live? If we work at it, do we get to have an epiphany?
I hope that my nephew, whose politics differ from mine, will see the work and get a different angle on how to live. I hope that we can acquire some compassion for our own failures and self-doubt. It’s a lot to ask. But ya gotta go big. We are funny. We are evil. I love my characters but don’t get me wrong, I am furious.