Kim Weild
Kim is the Area Chair for the John Wells Directing Program and an award-winning live-performance director/creative-generator/bridgebuilder/educator/researcher. Her unique and versatile approach to directing spans a multitude of genres and styles, and she is renowned for her seamless collaboration with d/Deaf and Disabled artists, leading to the creation of groundbreaking, inclusive bi-lingual performances that integrate American Sign Language and voiced languages.
Kim’s work investigates themes of otherness while actively highlighting the advantages of difference—whether it is culture, language, gender, ability, socio-economic class, or race—disrupting and challenging contemporary perceptions about what is “normal.” At the heart of her practice is the question: What is required of us to begin to understand another human being wholly?
In 2023, building upon her decades-long expertise as Artistic Director of Our Voices, she became Co-Creator of The Apothetae Residency at The Public Theater in New York (with Gregg Mozgala and Katherine Williams) a company dedicated to the exploration and innovation of Access Aesthetics and Disability Performance.
As director of Keith Hamilton Cobb’s widely acclaimed play American Moor, Kim helped shape the play over eight years. American Moor is now part of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s permanent collection, is published by Methuen Bloomsbury, was filmed for Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library, and is taught worldwide.
Kim has been recognized with a Drama Desk Award nomination for Unique Theatrical Event and has received the N.Y. Innovative Theater Award for Outstanding Performance Art Production, the Eliot Norton Award, two IRNE Awards, two AUDELCO Awards, the Cleveland Critics Circle Award, and N.Y. Times Critic’s Pick. She has received commissions from prestigious institutions such as NYC’s High Line and N.Y. Live Arts/Live Ideas: Celebrating the Worlds of Oliver Sacks. Her multiple fellowships and residencies include the Park Avenue Amory Artist Residency, the Archive Residency, The Kennedy Center Fellow, the Schubert Fellowship, and the Williamstown Theater Festival-Foeller Fellowship. She is the first recipient of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation’s Guest Artist Initiative, a Women’s Project alumna, and an Associate Artist with The Adaptations Project. She is the 2022 finalist for the prestigious Alan Schneider Director Award.
Her work has been presented and produced at Shakespeare’s Globe London, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood’s Linde Center for Music and Learning, New York Theater Workshop, Cherry Lane Theatre, ArtsEmerson, Red Bull Theater, Beckett Theater, Goodspeed Musicals, Primary Stages, New York Live Arts, Pittsburgh City Theater, Pittsburgh Playhouse, Pittsburgh Public Theater, The Mark Taper Forum, Williamstown Theater Festival, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, The Beall Center for Art and Technology, The Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, The New Ohio Theater (NYC), Teatro alla Scala, and Wolf Trap Performing Arts Center. Her production of Uncle Vanya was an official selection at the Prague Quadrennial. She directed The Bacchae and The Birds in multiple venues in Greece and is also the co-writer of the new “Fusion Musical” Dusty, about the Queen of Blue Eyed Soul, Dusty Springfield, which ran for eight months on London’s West End.
Her Broadway work includes Associate Director duties on the musical Amazing Grace and three Michael Blakemore productions: Terrence McNally’s Deuce with Dame Angela Lansbury and Marian Seldes; Mark Twain’s Is He Dead? starring Norbert Leo Butz and Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit with Dame Angela Lansbury, Rupert Everett, Jayne Atkinson, and Christine Ebersole, Off-Broadway, she has been Associate Director to Tina Landau on Iphigenia 2.0 at Signature Theatre and Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Wig Out! at The Vineyard Theater.
Proud SDC member