Kim Weild

Kim Weild

Kim Weild (Director) is a New York based director, choreographer, performer, writer and teacher. Her work is ensemble based and deeply collaborative. It is thoroughly grounded in narrative, honoring text while weaving matrices of movement, sound and images. She is steadfastly committed to the training and development of versatile, imaginative, knowledgeable, disciplined and dedicated theatre artists. Two hallmarks of her work are radical inclusion and cross cultural collaboration.

For ten years she was a student at The School of American Ballet and performed with The New York City Ballet. Her interest in the intersection between theatre and dance began there. She first developed movement oriented theatre pieces in 1986 when she worked as an actor with Robert Wilson in the Richard Strauss opera Salome performed at Teatro alla Scala in Milan. She also collaborated closely with Beatrice Lees from 1988 until her death in 1995. Ms. Lees was a sister of Viola Spolin and herself a pioneer in improvisational dance movement. This partnership strengthened and deepened Kim’s relationship of the uses of movement in theatre.

As a director, some of Kim’s work includes: Uncle Vanya (Official selection Prague Quadrennial), Kaddish by Allen Ginsberg (NY International Fringe Festival), The Good Woman of Setzuan (w/2 Star Symphony), My Fair Lady (Cape Cod times called it “pitch-pefect”), Eccentricities of a Nightingale, Endgame, Charles Mee’sFêtes de la Nuit (Riverside Theater), Safe Home (CAP 21-World Premiere),Andrea Lepcio’s A Peddler’s Tale: Buttons, Guts and Bluetooth (The Women’s Project), Paradise Now (conceived/directed by Weild for Williamstown Theater Festival), Free Range Thanksgiving (Foundry Theatre) and A Decade of Dreams: Celebrating the Music of the Young People’s Chorus of New York(Carnegie Hall). She is actively engaged in developing new work for the stage and directs readings at Lincoln Center Theater, Primary Stages, NY Theater Workshop, Ma-Yi 2 G, New Georges, Epiphany Ensemble and Columbia Stages. She is associate director to Michael Blakemore having worked with him most recently on the Broadway revival of Blithe Spirit starring Angela Lansbury and previously on Terrence McNally’s Deuce (Lansbury/Seldes) and Mark Twain/David Ives’ Is He Dead? She has also associate directed for Tina Landau on Tarell McCraney’s WIG OUT! at the Vineyard Theatre and Charles Mee’sIphigenia 2.0 at The Signature Theater.

Although Kim has been working with the Suzuki Method of Actor Training and the Viewpoints for nearly 20 years, it was in the summer of 1995 that she first trained with Anne Bogart’s SITI Co. and continues to train extensively with them. In 1998 she was asked by Bogart to begin teaching both trainings on the west coast and by 2000, she co-founded and was Artistic Director of a Los Angeles-based company committed to supporting and strengthening the theatre community through ongoing year round training sessions in Suzuki, Viewpoints and Composition as well as summer training sessions with SITI Co. During its existence, over 1,000 theatre artists participated in the company’s workshops, inspiring the creation of new works and the founding of theatre companies not only in the United States but also around the world

In 2004 Kim relocated to New York to attend Columbia University’s three-year MFA directing program. Since graduating in 2007 her directing career has kept her very busy. However she continues to teach directing, Viewpoints, Suzuki and Composition both here and abroad. In the U.S. she has taught at: Columbia University, Yale University, Barnard College, The O’Neill Center-NTI, Atlantic Theater School, Primary Stages, New Actors Workshop, CalArts, UC Irvine, University of Houston, CalState Fullerton, CalState Riverside, La Jolla Playhouse, About Productions, Sowelu Ensemble, Stone Soup, Integrity Productions, National Theater Workshop of the Handicapped, ACES-ECA and at LACHSA where she held the David Parsons Chair.

As an actor and dancer she has performed extensively in both Europe and the U.S. She has created/collaborated on new theatre pieces with: Anne Bogart (SITI Co.), Diane Paulus, Tina Kronis and Richard Algers (Theatre Movement Bazaar). Among some of the other artists she has worked with are George Balanchine, Caryl Churchill, Max Stafford-Clark, Simon Curtis, André Gregory, Solange Golovine, Edward Gorey, Andrea Haring, Tina Landau, Beatrice Lees, Judith Malina, Larry Moss, Mike Nichols, George Morrison, Sabrina Peck, Abraham Pulido, Richard Schechner, Paul Sills, Tadashi Suzuki and Robert Wilson, in various theaters, most notably: Lincoln Center Koch Theatre (formerly N.Y. State Theatre) and Avery Fischer Hall, Carnegie Hall, The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Circle In The Square, The Royal Court Theatre, The Moscow Art Theatre, Teatro alla Scala, The Saratoga Performing Arts Center, The Beall Center of Technology, Wolftrap Performing Arts Center, The Kitchen and The Performance Garage.

Kim is the recipient of a Kennedy Center Directing Fellowship (design program with Ming Cho Lee and Constance Hoffman), a Shubert Fellow, the 2006 Williamstown Theatre Festival Foeller Fellow, a Women’s Project alumna and member of SSD