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Kate Whoriskey: A Force to be Reckoned With by Cheryl Murfin | Photo by Ingrid Pape-Sheldon

Kate Whoriskey has long understood the power of theater to create dialogue around even the harshest issues of an era.

Whoriskey, considered one of the most compelling and talented young directors in American theater, first made that association back in high school. At 16, she turned to theater as a way to explore an intense interest in the Vietnam War. She wanted to create an open dialogue about the treatment of Vietnam veterans.

“No one would talk about it,” she recalls. “So, I went to our local VA Hospital and said, ‘Would you be interested in a little play about Vietnam vets?’” Soon after, she began interviewing veterans about their experience.”

Whoriskey’s determination inspired friends and teachers to participate in the project, which became the director’s first staged production: Views from Vietnam.

As part of the project, Whoriskey had parents talk directly to vets. She says she will never forget the mother who stood up in tears during the dialogue. She apologized for her participation in the maligning of veterans.

“It was a powerful evening — a sort of coming together,” says Whoriskey.

It was also a powerful first seed for Whoriskey’s current artistic focus: To foster politically, socially and culturally relevant theater that speaks to the triumphs and challenges of the day while motivating artists and audience members alike to get involved and effect positive change.
It’s a vision that makes Whoriskey’s appointment as artistic director of Intiman Theatre a boon for Seattle audiences.

“Kate’s talent, warmth and unique ability to translate her artistic vision into compelling theater make her one America’s most important theater artists,” says Lynn Nottage, author of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined. Whoriskey directed the show’s premiere run at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre before taking the play to the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York. Both productions won accolades from audiences and theater critics.

“She’s a warrior director, who fights for her vision and fiercely protects the artistic integrity of the work that she creates,” adds Nottage. “Her theatrical vocabulary is vast and unpredictable, which makes her a wonderful collaborator and director.”

Collaboration is key to Intiman’s future under Whoriskey’s artistic direction. Only six months into the position, she is already working to establish a collective of regional artists who she hopes will “support and critique each other’s work,” dialogue about how to collectively move the theater arts forward locally and globally, and develop and produce new works. And, as part of her first season with the Tony Award-winning Intiman, Whoriskey orchestrated the launch of the theater’s International Cycle of plays focused on cultures and countries that Whoriskey believes deserve greater representation on the American stage. The program is designed to foster artistic relationships with the countries represented in the works.

Whoriskey boasts a reputation for fresh and daring interpretations of both classic and contemporary works. She was hired by Intiman’s board of directors at the recommendation of Artistic Director Emeritus Bartlett Sher despite the fact that she had never led a regional theater.

Colleague and sound designer Rob Milburn says there is no question she will be a powerful voice for theater in the region given “her intelligence, her curiosity, her passion for the truth in her work and her stamina, which is considerable.”

Considerable is an understatement. Along with reenvisioning a premier theater, developing new works in collaboration with a wide range of artists and directing productions, Whoriskey also spends ample time running after Rory, her 22-month-old son with actor/husband Daniel Breaker. The threesome have traveled coast-to-coast and around the world.

“Rory flew at seven or eight weeks . . .he’s been to Paris twice,” Whoriskey says of integrating her son into the fast-paced life of both an actor and a director. Breaker, an accomplished thespian, is perhaps best known for his turn as Donkey in the hit Broadway production of Shrek the Musical.

“The two most significant events in her life since I have known her are her marriage and the birth of her son,” says Milburn. “As these relationships have grown and deepened so has her understanding of, and her compassion for, all the characters that inhabit the plays we work on. She keeps digging deeper with each new project.”

The couple has worked hard to keep Rory central in a world of long hours and intense creativity. Whoriskey heads home every five hours to spend time with her son during her workday.

“I don’t know what I’m doing — every day is improvisational,” she laughs.

“Motherhood has centered Kate and given her a new sense of drive, purpose and focus,” observes Nottage. “I never think a woman loses out by having a family; she’s merely forced to become a more skilled juggler.”

The soft-spoken director has not hidden her penchant for hefty works in her first season with Intiman. After opening the 2010 season with the Depression era-focused Paradise Lost, Whoriskey brought Nottage’s Ruined to the Intiman stage in July. Set in the worn-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, Ruined is an unflinching look at what it takes to survive in a world where women’s bodies are used as weapons of war.

“People don’t think of me as ‘light,’” muses the director, who traveled to Uganda with Nottage to research the play, interviewing women “ruined” by rape and other atrocities still common in the Congo and other war-torn countries.

“But we’ve got Molière coming next!” Whoriskey points out when asked about this year’s decidedly heavy season. Friends, critics and colleagues say one of the director’s greatest strengths is her versatility, as comfortable with hard-hitting social commentary as sanguine satire and comedy.

“Kate and I met on what would be the equivalent of a director/playwright blind date,” says Nottage. “I remember meeting her on a particularly frigid day. I was a bit dubious of the meeting, but I instantly responded to Kate’s passion, confidence and clearly articulated artistic vision. At a young age, I knew she was going to be a force to be reckoned with.” Whoriskey only recently turned 40.

Nottage is clear that skill, clarity and focus, not just a warm personality, are the power behind Whoriskey’s success.

“She has a seriously adventurous streak that continually intrigues and challenges me as a collaborator, but she’s also a judicious editor and a highly skilled craftsperson, which keeps her work precise and focused,” she explains. “She has a choreographer’s grace and an artist’s eye, which gives her work a visual dynamism and lovely sense of movement.”
Whoriskey’s colleagues use a powerful array of adjectives to describe her, including fearless, tenacious, feminine, perceptive and visceral.

“Intelligent, driven, focused . . . I think what drives Kate’s success is that when she’s working, she’s not worried about success; she’s focused purely on the work itself, which is what makes her directing so powerful,” says Condola Rashad, who plays Sophie in Ruined.

To a one, the director’s coworkers remarked on one quality: her sense of dignity.

“I first met Kate in 1990 in New York. We worked at a pseudo-upscale pizza restaurant called Pizza Piazza on 10th Street and Broadway,’’ says actor Russell G. Jones. “Kate was at New York University . . . there wasn’t a lot of dignity to be had while wearing khakis, a pink golf shirt and a green apron, but somehow Kate managed to keep hers in most situations.”
Whoriskey went from pizza hostess to a pedigreed Master of Theatre Arts. She is a graduate of NYU and the ART Institute at Harvard. She’s been a visiting lecturer at Princeton University. As a freelance director her credit at prestigious playhouses runs shore-to-shore: the Manhattan Theatre Club, the Vineyard Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre, the Goodman Theatre, South Coast Repertory, American Repertory Theatre and Intiman. Yet she views herself as just on the cusp of adulthood in the world of the stage.

“Honestly, I feel like I am just beginning to be mature,” she says. “I was just telling someone that when you freelance direct, it’s almost like being in a constant Peter Pan stage because you feel like you can demand anything from a theater because your job is to make your show the best. So you push people, you push budgets, you push actors, you push buttons...and running a theater always seemed like it would be so heavy.

“But now I’ve come to value the idea of an artistic home,” she says about moving to Intiman. “That you have more control over the work was compelling to me, but even more compelling to me was the possibility of making new works with a community over time.”

In some ways, Whoriskey continues to rely on pizza parlor sensibilities to get what she wants out of actors and other theater artists:

“I remember how intense and intelligent her observations were in the wait station, which was strange because she appeared so cute and harmless on the floor,” recalls Jones. “I loved the fact that she allowed people to underestimate her on the floor, because it afforded her some wiggle room as she wasn’t a great waitress, but she would stand for no such thing from her peers. The fact that she navigates her own complexity enables her to recognize the complexities around her.”

Cheryl Murfin is a freelance writer, owner of Nesting Instincts doula service and an avid theater lover.

UPCOMING PRODUCTIONS AT INTIMAN

A Doctor In Spite of Himself
Written by Molière
New Adaptation by Christopher Bayes and Steven Epp
Directed by Christopher Bayes
September 3 – October 10

The Scarlet Letter
Based on the novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne
New Adaptation by Naomi Iizuka
Directed by Lear DeBessonet
October 22 – December 5

Black Nativity: A Gospel Song Play
Based on book by Langston Hughes
Directed by Jacqueline Moscou
Music Direction by Pastor Patrinell Wright
December 10 – 26

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit www.intiman.org or call 206-269-1900.

RUN FOR CONGO WOMEN

On Saturday, October 16, Intiman Theatre hosts a Run for Congo Women fun run and walk around Green Lake. Check-in is at 9 a.m. and “Step-off” is at 10.

All registration proceeds will go directly to support the work of Women for Women International’s Congo program, which provides health and literacy training; rights awareness training; job skills training; money for food, clothes and schooling and a support system to help women evolve from victim to survivor to active citizen. The run/walk is sponsored by Intiman in conjunction with its production of Ruined and provides a way for people inspired by the play to take action and help improve the lives of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Registration after August 31 is $25 for adults and $15 for students.

Register as an individual or create a team of 5 or more adults.

To register, visit www.intiman.org/2010Season/ruined/runwalk.aspx. To learn more about the work of Women for Women International in the DR Congo and elsewhere, go to
www.womenforwomen.org.

©Copyright 2010, Caliope Publishing Company