Katie Chidester
Director | Producer | Curator
Reviews for Tiny Beautiful Things at Chance Theater:
"And though Tiny Beautiful Things could easily captivate an audience with four actors simply reading Dear Sugar emails and Sugar’s remarkably insightful responses, Chidester’s approach (performed on scenic designer Kristin Campbell Coyne’s gorgeous-to-look-at, authentically lived-in living room/kitchen set) transcends the script’s Q&A format to become something as theatrical as it is transformative."
"The show’s construction is a model of efficiency and Chance’s director for this production, Katie Chidester, employs non-fussy staging that doesn’t call attention to itself, but keeps her four actors as the focal points."
OCTG Recommended
"The play has powerful, beautiful, delicate, and personal stories. Part of what makes the show special is that while it is deeply moving, it doesn't feel overly sentimental, clichéd, or campy.""
Voice of OC discusses the OC-Centric New Play Festival and interview's Katie about her work and thoughts on producing/directing new plays!
Voice of OC
Interviews Katie about New Work
"It’s a quirky, intense little piece shifting back and forth in time, and slightly confusing at first. Only a highly skilled director like Katie Chidester could pull it off; somehow she juggles it all brilliantly."
We Will Not Describe The Conversation
Jordan Young
Featured in American Theatre Magazine
"Beautiful Star"
"Still, the meditation of what Strindberg could possibly mean to us in the here and now — as well as the meditation on what actually constitutes the here and now — retained its charm.
Katie Chidester's direction was one big reason why."
"The Miss Julie Project"
LA Weekly's 'Pick of the Week'
Even if you've seen it before, go see Triad Stage's 'Beautiful Star'.... If you’ve seen “Beautiful Star” before, you will want to see it again. If you haven’t, get thee to Triad Stage.... Katie Chidester directs “Star” after last year’s assistant director gig.
"Beautiful Star"
Triad Stage
Chidester’s staging is wholly natural and lifelike in its pacing, the ebb and flow of emotions, the rhythms of speech and the play’s depiction of the pitfalls of all relationships.
The text and Chidester’s staging of it are simultaneously very funny and devastatingly sad.
"Art" by Yasmina Reza
The Hunger Artists
"The show is artfully directed by Katie Chidester, creating two worlds separated by time but connected by story. "
-Postscript Productions
"...directed by Katie Chidester with all the sensitivity and passion the play requires."
Long Beach Gazette
"Katie Chidester provides skilled, clear, and often inspired direction, keeping up the pacing and expertly holding all of our focus though both acts. She is not afraid of the silence which this play needs to feel believable, and her use of theatricality, though reserved, helps elevate the play's most transcendent moments. "
-Long Beach Post
"Sans Merci" by Johnna Adams
The Garage Theater
"Chidester’s realization of Machinal is so pitch-perfect that it’s hard to imagine that the original production wouldn’t seem lacking by comparison, considering that Chidester has recourse to inspiration and technology unavailable to producers in 1928."
Greater Long Beach
"...director Katie Chidester has all the right instincts in knowing where stridency is appropriate, and in mounting a production that could hardly be more compelling."
-Signal Tribune, Long Beach
"As director Katie Chidester's brave staging proves, "Machinal" depicts a world devoid of kindness, consideration and most other redeeming human qualities."
-OC Register
"This compelling study of a sensitive woman trying to live up to the expectations of others and find her place in “the machine of life” may be Expressionist in style but it’s no musty museum relic in director Katie Chidester’s agile hands—beginning with a scene in an office building that could generate enough electricity to light up Long Beach."
-OC Examiner
"Machinal" by Sophie Treadwell
Long Beach Playhouse
"...director Katie Chidester succeeds in the most important objective: showcasing what an awesome talent Shepard was at his relatively short-lived peak."
-OCWeekly
Buried Child
The Hunger Artists Theater Co.