Kathryn Markey
Interview Highlights
When women actors turn 50, they step into their power but there are fewer professional opportunities available.
We can do more than one thing well, and all of our pursuits inform one another.
It’s critical to have theatre roles that are written from a diversity of perspectives.
Women excel at building relationships, which makes them great candidates for leadership positions in the theatre industry.
Find Kathryn Online:
Website: kathrynmarkey.com
Kathryn’s Current and Upcoming Work:
Kathryn organized the Plays for Us solo reading series. Learn more about Plays for Us here.
Bio
Kathryn Markey (she/her) is an NYC based director, actor and writer. She is the co-creator of the PLAYS FOR US series, dedicated to finding and nurturing new plays with substantial roles for women over 40. Recent directing credits include Amy Stiller’s JUST TRUST at Emerging Artists, NOTES TO WHEREVER at the Cherry Lane, and new work in the Woman Playwrights Initiative at the Ivoryton Playhouse. Kathryn has staged plays and musicals at Pitt Stages, Axelrod Performing Arts Center, Mason Street Warehouse, The Depot Theatre, Ocean State Theatre, New London Barn, White Plains Performing Arts Center, Cortland Rep, 14 seasons at Saint Michael’s Playhouse, and 5 seasons as resident director of IN YOUR FACE NEW YORK at St. Ann’s Warehouse and Merkin Concert Hall. Acting and writing credits span New York, regional and international stages, and the recent premiere of her solo play THE TRUE STORY OF JUDITH. Co-creator of the satirical country band THE CHALKS which has been seen and heard in cabarets, radio and honky tonks across the country. KathrynMarkey.com
“Pay attention. Activate. Engage in your art. Demand better art.”
Kathryn’s Creative Journey
Amy: We are here with the fabulous Kathryn Markey. Kathryn, please introduce yourself, share your pronouns, and tell about what you do in the theatrical space.
Kathryn: I’m Kathryn Markey, I use she/her pronouns. I’m an actor, director, writer, and creative entrepreneur. I’m interested in all things creative that have to do with acting and theatre. At this point, I’m trying to say yes to all opportunities and be as diverse a theatre artist as possible.
Hayley: How did you come to your creative work?
Kathryn: There has never been a moment in my life that I did not know I was an actor. That’s all I ever wanted to do. I don’t understand why anyone wants to do any other job. I always think, “Oh yeah, that person is a firefighter, but they really wish they were an actor.” It seems to me like it’s the best job. Not even “job”, the best way to live your life. I came from a wonderful, supportive family that was not a creative family. I started dancing school when I was three. And from then on, I wanted to be in front of people doing my thing.
At my age, you start thinking, “Am I successful?” One definition is that you’re only successful if you’re on a TV show or famous. Another definition is, Do you work all the time? I don’t work all the time. But in the course of my life, because one door didn’t open, I had to look for another door. So I’ve done a lot of different things.
When I was a young mother with two small children, I started teaching. I studied with George Morrison, who ran the New Actors Workshop. I became a teacher and taught acting for 12 years under three master teachers - Mike Nichols, George Morrison, and Paul Sills. I learned so much as a teacher. I also spent a chunk of my life doing ADR for movies, which is looping, additional voices. I was in a loop group, and I could do that when my children were young. I looped probably 75 movies during that period of time.
Fifteen years ago, I started directing, mainly because I needed to diversify. I needed more opportunities, more work. You hit the point where there aren’t as many acting roles and opportunities for women, particularly as you age. So I started directing and loved it.
If I look at what I’m doing now - I’ve done six audiobooks since January, so I’m back in the voice world. In the last couple of months, I’ve directed Our Town at a college, I’ve directed Pippin at a high school, and now I’m directing Oliver at a middle school. I’ll be directing a professional production of Boeing Boeing in July, and I’m looking forward to returning to the professional world. After that, I will be joining theatre maker Fay Simpson in a residency as an actor as she develops a new play she is writing.
My point is I’ve done a lot of different things. Not having a ton of work in one area made me develop other areas. If I had started acting and was acting all the time, I might not have started directing or writing or done anything self-generated or entrepreneurial. You have to look at your whole career as an opportunity. Recently, I’ve been thinking maybe I’ll write a book. I probably will write a book at some point. But that’s my story.
Hayley: I love the perspective that it has to feel like an opportunity for you. Some people lack the confidence to jump from one hat to another, because we’re told to pick a lane. The myth of “If you truly want that thing, then how could you want something else?”
Kathryn: When I was a young actor, a guy in my class who worked all the time as an actor had directed something, and he didn’t know how to manage it. George Morrison told him, “You can be a good actor and also a good director.” That sounds ridiculously simple, but yeah, people can do more than one thing and be good at them. And they inform each other. My teaching made me a much better actor.
Amy: That’s a marker of success too, being able to diversify your skillset and have all the things you do inform one another.
Plays for Us
Amy: Can you tell us about the play reading series you’re working on, Plays For Us?
Kathryn: I’m a member of the Actors Center, which provides ongoing educational opportunities for professional actors. I said in a class, when women turn 50, they suddenly have all their power. And then there’s no work. So you’ve got power but you don’t have the roles. The executive director asked me to lead a panel discussion about aging and sexism for women in this field. We had a really provocative conversation. The Actors Center has quite a lot of older women who are still acting, and they had some amazing stories.
Dee Pelletier, a wonderful actor, said to me, “What can we do?” So we came up with a reading series, Plays For Us. We thought, “Let’s find plays that have great roles for us.” We started reading plays by members of Honor Roll, an advocacy group for older women writers. We want new plays with substantial roles for women middle-aged and up. They can have men in them, they can be written by men. And we want plays across the cultural spectrum because that’s of interest to us.
We started in 2020 with a couple of terrific readings in an art gallery, and then COVID hit. We went to Zoom for a long time, and we did readings every month. Now we’re back in-person. Two years into this reading series, we have done 24 events, some on Zoom and some live. We’ve read plays by 45% writers of color and 40-45% roles for actors of color. We have had Asian American playwrights, Black, Latinx, and Native indigenous people. These playwrights were harder to find, but we dug. You can say, “I’d love to hire more people of color, but they don't apply.” Okay, then you gotta go find them. So we have done that.
The big takeaway of Plays For Us has been this incredible networking relationship. I know all these playwrights now, and that has been incredible. Every playwright wants to hear their play read by really good actors, which is what we’ve got. Because it’s been on Zoom, we can include people from all over. We’ve done work sessions with writers - no audience, just read the play, talk about it, help them hash it out. We always have a feedback discussion about the plays.
And now we are doing a solo “festival” in May. It’s an informal work session, invite-only, we’re not charging admission. We invited 18 or so women to read solo pieces they have written for themselves. I have a solo piece that I premiered in October, which I’ll be doing on Mother’s Day, May 8th. I wrote it during the pandemic. I had an idea for a piece, so I gave myself deadlines, made myself accountable to a group of colleagues, and got the thing written. I am really happy with it and eager to get it out into the wider world.
We have had a zero budget, but recently, I was able to raise some money, so we’re now at a point where we can formalize, create a mission, and figure out what we ultimately do. I think ultimately we produce. Or at the very least, we’re a clearing house. If artistic directors are looking for plays that have great roles for women, call me! I have a Google Drive filled with wonderful plays by wonderful writers. The roles are out there, the pieces are out there. There are women writing - they’re not on Broadway, but they’re doing it. And that’s who goes to the theater anyway.
Hayley: Yeah, 68% of Broadway-going audiences are women.
Kathryn: In the theatres where I direct or act, artistic directors will say, “Women bring their husbands to the theatre, so you gotta give them something for the husbands.” But women are the ticket buyers. We’ve been fed male narratives our whole lives. I don’t need to see Death of a Salesman again. People will say, “But it’s great! It’s brilliant!” Yes, it is. I don't need to see it again. I need something else. I need new plays.
My son worked with a professor and director named Kym Moore, and I am intrigued by her thoughts on race in theatre. It opened my eyes to the trap of color-blind casting - that many times it is about saying, “Black people, come on over, we’ll let you do our white plays.” Rather than having roles written for Black people in the first place. For me - I don’t want to play Claudius in Hamlet, I want to play a strong character who is written as a woman.
I want us to look into history and find the female playwrights that were overlooked. I was reading plays for the Hedgepig Ensemble’s project Expand the Canon, and I read these Scandinavian plays that are as good or better than Ibsen, Strindberg - written by women. Because they’re written by women, the female characters are really fully developed and drawn.
I’ll say yes to anything, I’ll do any job. But in my big picture, I’m interested in new work, new voices, new perspectives. Have you seen A Strange Loop? Brilliant. It is a privilege for me to sit in that audience and see that perspective. I’m sick of people who are unwilling to see that making room for new voices does not mean a sudden scarcity of expression for the rest of us. We must have a mindset of abundance. We need to make room for everyone.
I have 30 years ahead of me to keep working. And I want there to be roles of substance and directorial opportunities for me. I already have felt that I have been aged out of certain jobs. There’s a whole canon of roles that I can’t play anymore. Why? Because someone arbitrarily decided, “If you get to this age, you can’t do that anymore.” I’m sitting here, with all this energy, all this power, all this drive…
Hayley: Passion for days!
Kathryn: This is all I’ve got. When you have kids, that is your creative energy. That job is never done, but it’s part-time now because I don’t have to do day-to-day things. But then you get your energy, and then it’s time to take over the world.
Thoughts on Womanhood and Identity
Amy: Kathryn, how does womanhood fit into your identity? What does being a woman mean to you?
Kathryn: I grew up in a family that was very male-centric. The men are the dominant characters. High-status, tough-guy men, that’s the people I was raised around. I don’t think I was ever a girly kind of girl, but I never had a sense of my gender being anything other than a woman. That’s who I am, a heterosexual woman. But I also felt like I should have power. And often I didn’t.
I always felt like I could do anything, but within my chosen field, women are often up against a skinny prejudice, a pretty prejudice, a straight hair prejudice. I remember not getting jobs because my hair was curly. I remember a casting director talking to me about “grooming.” She meant she wanted me to go home and straighten my hair and come back. But she didn’t say that.
I feel like women are the creative force of the world. Deborah Tannen writes that men have report talk and women have rapport talk. I’m directing a bunch of readings for the Gold Standard Festival. I met with one of the playwrights, a woman in her mid-70s, terrific playwright, and we had not met before. It was all about - where’s our common goal, where are we together?
Women have to help other women, and I think in general women do. Unless we are threatened. In standup comedy, there was a rule that only one female comic could be on a bill in an evening of comedy. So you couldn’t advocate for other women, because there was only room for one. I feel a lot of strength as a woman. Women have a lot of stamina and longevity. We are long-distance runners, not sprinters.
I was always a child feminist. I used to say to my mother, “Why do I have to clear the table and Ed gets to take out the garbage?” From an early age, I felt like things that were assigned simply because you're a woman were wrong. My dad would say, “It's traditional.” Because it’s traditional or because it's a gender-assigned trope is not a reason to do anything.
In college, I studied feminist aesthetic criticism. So I always look at things through the lens of - how are the women depicted in this? Look at this year’s nominated movies for the Oscars. Almost none of them passed the Bechdel test. Almost none!
Hayley: In 2022!
Kathryn: That’s absolutely unacceptable. I can’t look at the world in any other way than being a woman, I can’t think of the world in any other lens than a feminist lens. I’m always looking at - What is that for women? How are we serving women? Are we serving women?
Kathryn’s Creative Mission
Hayley: Kathryn, how would you describe your creative mission?
Kathryn: I want people to pay attention. Not just accept what’s going on, pay attention. Don’t let it just wash over you, activate. Engage in your art. Demand better art. Demand better movies. Demand better plays. If a theatre is only producing plays by men with male directors, male designers, don’t patronize that theatre. There’s your power.
For me, parity is important. It has to be 50% female. It has to be. For no other reason than that’s what the world looks like. If you take acting out of it, there’s no other job in theatre that HAS to be done by one gender or the other. A director, a designer, an artistic director, a producer, a shop steward, a painter, a costumer - any of those jobs can be done by a person of any gender. There’s no reason to not have parity.
Amy: Kathryn, your passion makes me want to go out and change the world.
Kathryn: I would like to change the world, but I need help.
Amy: Well yeah, we can’t change the world alone. We’ve gotta do it together!
Kathryn: I need people and a platform. I need people to let me get in a position where I can make these changes. And there are some people who do not want this energy. I have had incidents in my career where someone said, “She’s too much. Too much energy, too many opinions, too many ideas, too many thoughts, too much power.” If you’re a woman who knows a lot of shit and is willing to say it, there's a certain kind of man who does not want to hear that.
Hayley: And there are also women who have been trained to be threatened by it.
Kathryn: And those are the other people we’ve gotta get to. It helps us all, we all rise.
Benefits of Womanhood and Lessons Learned
Amy: Kathryn, how do you see women as being uniquely beneficial to the theatre space?
Kathryn: I think women are less involved in controlling people’s experiences and more interested in bringing people together. Women are interested in community in a different way than men are. The more women you have in your organization, the better it runs.
I’ve probably directed 40 or 45 plays or musicals. I have had only one that had an almost all-female design team. I had a female set designer, lighting designer, costume designer, and a male sound designer. It was a play about women written by a woman. The guy at the theatre asked, “Does anyone know a woman director who’s good with comedy?” So I applied and got the job. That collaboration was fantastic - I’m easy to work with. I’m very diplomatic and collaborative, I'm not a pain in the ass. And all of us on that team knew it was an unusual opportunity to be on this female-centric island in the middle of a male-run business.
I just think you need women everywhere. You need more women in all fields and more women in leadership positions. The money I raised for Plays for Us this week - I sent out three letters to three women I know. Within 20 minutes, all of them had given me a significant amount of money. And it’s based on my relationship with them. They know me, they know my work, they know I’m asking for a good reason, and they’re willing to support that. That’s a big part of this field, you have to be able to make relationships. And a lot of women are great at that. Not all women, but a lot.
Amy: And those are the skills that are needed in leadership positions in theatre.
Kathryn: We have to allow someone who’s over 50 to get the job. The current model from We See You White American Theater is that we don’t want artistic directors staying in their positions more than ten years, and that just makes sense to me.
Hayley: Kathryn, what do you wish you had known when you first started your career?
Kathryn: I wish I had gone to graduate school. I spent 12 years in George Morrison’s class, and I can’t imagine I would have learned more in a graduate program than I did in that. But it didn’t set me up professionally. I wish I had learned how to network better as a younger person to set myself up with professional contacts. And I wish I had been mentored more. I did have some mentors, but they came later.
But if I had been an actor for my whole career, I probably wouldn’t have learned all the other things I’ve done. I have a satirical country band called The Chalks, and we had a TV sitcom development deal. We went to California and sold and developed a sitcom. Not a lot of people get to do that. The sitcom did not make it to the air, but it was such an incredible learning experience. We created that, me and my partners. We did that.
My sons are artists too, but they are being raised in a family of artists. I was not. Being a second-generation artist, you get a little bit of a bump. My kids are realistic. They know that you can have a life and a career and just be a regular not-famous actor. They’re realistic about how hard it is and what paychecks actually look like. They have a realism about what it is to live your life as an artist.
Final Thoughts
Amy: Kathryn, what are you most proud of in your life?
Kathryn: That I keep going. That’s very emotional, isn’t it? There’s adversity, always. I’ve had a lot of personal adversity in the last couple of years, and I just keep going. I have a lot of stamina, fortitude, energy. I don’t say no. I’m disappointed, things are hard, it’s difficult. They say a shark has to keep moving, they don’t ever stop, and I feel like a shark. I have not let myself be defeated. I keep going. I keep reinventing. I keep finding ways.
Things do come around to you. I’m directing this Gold Standard Festival because one of the playwrights recommended me to the producer. I hadn’t worked with her, but she just believed in me. It’s five new playwrights that I haven’t worked with before, it's a producer I haven’t worked with before. It’s a whole new group of people, folks who will hopefully continue to be part of my work life going forward.
You keep going, do a good job, and leave people with a positive impression. There’s so much to be learned from younger people and from older people. We need not only racial and gender diversity but also age. Younger people need to be working with older people. We are all peers. You need people who are different.
Amy: You learn so much from people at different stages of life than you.
Kathryn: Absolutely. And from people with different life experiences and circumstances…
Hayley: Totally. Thank you so much Kathryn, this was amazing.
Kathryn: I appreciate you two, I’m so glad you’re doing this.
