Bio



Kate Bell is a writer, theater maker, singer/songwriter, and teaching artist.

Kate Bell’s plays have been produced or developed in New York at the Park Avenue Armory (Education Space Grant), the One-Minute Play Festival @ the New Ohio Theater, Alchemical Studios (Ant and Dove Collective Reading Series), Downtown Urban Theater Festival at HERE Arts Center, Culture Project, Theater for the New City, Red Fern Theatre Company, The Bechdel Group, Naked Angels Tuesdays@9, Sanguine Theatre Company, New Perspectives Theatre, Manhattan Theater Source, Gallery Players, Theatre for the New Economy, Random Access Theatre, and at Baruch College (with Committed Theatre), as well as in the Washington D.C. Area by Silver Spring Stage, and in the Appalachian Play Festival at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, VA.  Past honors include the Audience Award at the 2015 DUTF, Finalist for Shakespeare's New Contemporaries @ American Shakespeare Center, Semi-finalist for the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting Fellowship at Juilliard, Finalist for The Playwrights Realm Fellows Program, Finalist/Honorable Mention for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Semi-finalist for the O’Neill Theater Conference, membership in New Perspectives Women’s Work Lab , runner-up finalist for the Princess Grace Award, and recipient of two Hopwood Awards at the University of Michigan, where she earned her M.F.A. in Creative Writing.  Kate is also a co-founder and proud member of Ant and Dove, a collective of writers for stage and screen.

As a director, Kate specializes in working with youth.  She founded the Lower Manhattan Arts Academy Theater Ensemble (or LoMATE) in collaboration with the Henry Street Settlement and LoMA students in the fall of 2005.  With LoMATE, Kate directed nineteen plays and musicals including Mother Courage and Her Children, Once on This Island, 365 Days/365 Plays (in collaboration with student directors and Urban Youth Theater at Henry Street Settlement’s Abrons Arts Center), Pippin, The Tempest, RENT, Metamorphoses, A Chorus Line, The Laramie Project, HAIR, The Crucible, The Wiz, Antigone, In The Heights, and Little Shop of Horrors, as well as the student-written plays Hip-Hop Medea, This Is Us…Intertwined, and The Sex Plays, the latter of which was featured at Developing Artists' Rebel Verses Theater Festival at Center Stage NY.  LoMATE also commissioned local playwrights to write short plays for Selfies: A Theatrical Journey Through the Lives and Minds of NYC Teens. In addition to her work with LoMATE, Kate has been a featured director for student-written work at Urban Youth Theater, as well as directing and facilitating the devising of The Life of the Building with Park Avenue Armory's Youth Ensemble.

In her life as a musician, Kate writes songs, sings, and plays a variety of instruments.  Her current musical project is the rock trio, Creek and Kills (formerly The Reverse Engineers).  Past rock projects include the garage/soul/rock project, RECESS (2010-12).  She also sang lead vocals, wrote music for, and managed the eight-piece jazz ensemble THE POMA-SWANK from 2003-07.  Kate's been involved in THE SICKS (on keys/backup vocals) during development of Marianne Pillsbury's Depression: The Musical, the SLIPS (on bass and vocals), PSXO (vocals), the GUITARMY manifestation of Sportsman's Paradise (guitar/vocals), as well as singing with a variety of wedding bands.

Kate has been a teaching artist in the New York City Public Schools since 2004, and is currently teaching for Theater Development Fund, Marquis Studios, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and Park Avenue Armory.  She also has experience working with older adults through Elders Share The Arts and Lifetime Arts, as well as being a 2012 SPARC grant artist-in-residence at Krakus Senior Center in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.  Currently she facilitates a monthly improvisation workshop at The Alzheimer's Foundation.  Prior to being a teaching artist, Kate taught writing at Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, and the Cooper Union.  She has experience educating pre-K through adult populations in theater, music, and writing of many genres.