Biography

Katie Chidester is a Southern California-based director and theater artist. She is Co-Founding Artistic Director of intersectional performance + art collective Project La Femme, a group that investigates and promotes community dialog revolving around the female-identifying voice, as well as a local playwriting festival of new works in 2019. Katie spent 12 years as an executive member of The Hunger Artist Theatre Co. as an actor, producer and director. She collaborated to direct/devise with experimental playwriting collective, Fell Swoop Playwrights for the Hollywood Fringe Festival for two world premiere productions. Director' credits include: Beautiful Star: An Appalachian Nativity in North Carolina at Triad Stage, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (UNCG), Machinal (Long Beach Playhouse), Desdemona: A Play About A Handkerchief (The Hunger Artists), Sans Merci (The Garage), The Miss Julie Dream Project (Son of Semele) Cloud 9 and Trifles (Triad UpStage). Assistant Directed for Casey Stangl at South Coast Repertory and most recently she revised a Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) script with an all-woman cast to include the chaos of COVID19 in 2022 at the Costa Mesa Playhouse.
Interned at Yale School of Drama, Summer Cabaret, alumni of Directors Lab West and SDC Observership.
Currently, she is a Board Member of OC Theatre Guild and Program Coordinator for the OCTG Awards.
Katie holds a BA degree from the University of Southern California and
an MFA in Directing from The University of North Carolina, Greensboro.