Vision Board.
My creative practice, career goals, and other works or artists that inspire my practice.
Image by Georgia Haupt.
My Creative Practice
My creative practice has been shaped through sustained training, experimentation, and somewhat relentless ongoing artistic development. I have consistently sought out opportunities across directing, performance, physical theatre, and interdisciplinary making, often saying yes first and figuring it out later. This has become a flexible, layered approach to theatre-making informed by multiple methodologies.
Finding ‘pleasure in effort’ is the foundation of my creative manifesto (see below), It refers to the rejection of an easy answers in favour of physical challenge, rigorous attention to detail, and a pursuit of artistic excellence. I find such joy in working through creative conundrums and challenging ourselves as artists to stage the impossible.
I believe directing is fundamentally about people; navigating different personalities, backgrounds, and working styles in real time. I am interested in how a director translates between different artistic languages, shaping them into a coherent shared outcome without flattening individual voices. I aim to create processes where artists feel supported, and where clarity enables risk, precision, and the occasional moment of theatre magic.
My directing practice is also strongly visual. With a background in design and visual art, I am interested in work that communicates through image, composition, and rhythm as much as text. I aim to build performance worlds that are visually precise and emotionally resonant, where meaning is carried through spatial relationships, embodied action, and visual structure as well as language.
Katie is a Marker Sniffing Lesbian, 2025. Image by Georgia Haupt.
My creative manifesto
Pleasure in Effort
Find pleasure in effort. Find pleasure in working hard together. In working at your edges and bracing the challenge. In the dedication of loving energy. In the trying and trying again. Find pleasure in the finding the limits, then pushing them.
Find pleasure in effort. Find pleasure in the time it takes to dig deep. In the burning attention to detail. In the joy of a world unfolding in each decision. In the tapestry of conscious choice, folding andf twisting meaning. Find pleasure in layers of complex connected thought.
Find pleasure in effort. Find pleasure in cultivating beautiful moments. In reverent pauses, brilliant colour and soft light. Fight passionately for beauty and excellence. Indulge in poetry and art for meaning AND decoration's sake. Find pleasure in the soft, sweet power of wonder and curiosity.
Underpinning these values is the idea of not doing anything in halves; if you have the intention to do something, do it to the best of your ability. Don’t make choices beacuse they are cheap, easy or well-liked. Fight passionately for theatre to look good, be performed well and make you feel something.
+ Direct boldly across independent, small-to-medium, and mainstage theatre.
+ Continue growing as a leader, creative, and artistic collaborator.
+ Build long-term creative relationships with artists and companies/organisations.
+ Stage existing texts with the same curiosity I bring to my devised/written work.
+ Collaborate with the established designers and technicians that have inspired me in my early career.
Career Goals
I am currently at a point in my practice where I am intentionally expanding beyond independent work into a broader freelance directing practice across independent, small-to-medium, and mainstage contexts. Much of my career to date has been shaped through the creation of my own work with my independent company The Drawer Productions, alongside my role as Artistic Director of Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre, which carries a strong artistic legacy and aesthetic lineage. Alongside this, my in-school directing and facilitation work has played a significant role in developing my practice as an engaged freelance director, building trusted relationships with educators, and arts organisations, and opening pathways to broader directing opportunities.
While this body of work continues to be central to my practice, I am now focused on further establishing myself as a sought-after independent director across a range of companies and scales, including small-to-medium arts organisations and mainstage institutions. This includes building ongoing relationships with companies, participating to seasonal programming, and developing a sustained directing profile that sits across both new and existing work within professional theatre settings.
Ultimately, my goal is to become a director who can move fluidly between independent and mainstage contexts, bringing a visually rich, people-centred, and process-driven approach to a wide range of theatrical forms.
+Keep making ambitious theatre that is visually rich, layered and artistically excellent.
Artistic Influences
The Making of Pinocchio, Cade & MacAskill
playful and heightened design integrated into the story-telling
intermedial performance
personal queer stories on stage
Volcano, Attic Projects
design-led story-telling
integration of movement, rich narrative-driven text, non-traditional audience encounter to create incredibly moving work
Cyrano de Bergerac, National Theatre
intricate poetic text
large ensemble cast
exposed mechanism of mic/sound equipment.
exceptional visual metaphor in staging