Katherine McGerr is a theater director, teacher, and dramaturg. She currently serves as Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater at Allegheny College, where she is directing Caryl Churchill's adaptation of A Dream Play and teaching courses in acting and text analysis.
Katherine holds an MFA in directing from Yale School of Drama, where her production work includes Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, Shakesepeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Bird Fire Fly by Mary Laws, No More Sad Things by Hansol Jung; Amiri Baraka's Dutchman, Howard Brenton's Christie in Love, and Arthur Kopit's Chamber Music. Other directing credits include Caryl Churchill's Seagulls (Long Wharf Next Stage), Anna Ziegler's An Incident and Joyce Carol Oates' Where Are you Going, Where Have You Been? (Workshops, Chautauqua Theater Company), and Gertrude Stein's Listen To Me (Barnard College). Katherine has assistant- and associate-directed for: Tina Landau, Ethan McSweeny, Maria Aitken, David Muse, Gordon Edelstein, Eric Ting and Vivienne Benesch, among others. As a dramaturg, she has worked on numerous regional and New York productions, including the world premiere of Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy (script assistant) and the Broadway revival of South Pacific (research assistant)
As a teacher, Katherine spent two summers with New Haven's Dwight/Edgewood project, mentoring middle-schoolers through the writing of their first play and directing the plays they wrote. She has also taught for Yale's Summer Conservatory for Actors and the Chautauqua Institution. As an artistic administrator, Katherine spent six seasons with the Chautauqua Theater Company, where she served as artistic associate and literary manager. She has also been the artistic coordinator at Playwrights Realm, directing fellow at Shakespeare Theatre Company, artistic resident at Long Wharf Theatre and artistic assistant at Yale Repertory Theatre.
A native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Katherine grew up in New Haven, Connecticut and Bloomington, Indiana. She is a graduate of the O'Neill National Theatre Institute and Columbia University.
Photo by Erik Pearson