Hi

My Theatrical Work

I’m a Raleigh-based Theatre Artist with experience directing, stage managing, and producing. As a versatile theatre artist with knowledge of nearly every aspect of theatre production, I’m hands on and can make any creative project happen.

In addition, I am a playwright and my work has been produced in Raleigh, Minneapolis, and New York City. I was a member of the 2021 Kennedy Center Playwriting Cohort. My plays can be found on New Play Exchange.

Here is a portfolio of some of my work!

Directing

Peerless by Jiehae Park

Bulldog Ensemble Theatre (Spring 2022)

For Bulldog Ensemble Theatre, I stepped in to direct the delayed production, upcoming at Walltown Children’s Theatre

Little Women Holiday Tea

Women's Theatre Festival (Fall 2017)

For Women’s Theatre Festival holiday show, I directed a holiday adaptation of Little Women at Sonorous Road Theatre

Space Girl by Mora V. Harris

Women's Theatre Festival (Summer 2017)

As a part of Women’s Theatre Festival’s season “Women are Funny”, I co-directed Space Girl at Sonorous Road Theatre

Stage Management + Producing

Men on Boats by Jaclyn Backhaus

Justice Theatre Project (Spring 2019)

Working with Justice Theatre Project and director Jules Odendahl-James, I worked as a production and performance stage manager

WTFringe

Women's Theatre Festival (Summer 2019)

As a part of my work as Production Manager with Women’s Theatre Festival, I produced the 2019 Fringe Festival. Working with the artists selected, I made sure they had staffing, tech, and performance needs satisfied. I also coordinated running the shows at both venues

The Moors by Jen Silverman

Manbites Dog Theater (March 2018)

Working with Manbites Dog and director Jules Odendahl-James, I worked as production and performance stage manager

Playwriting

Homily

A queer, feminist re-imagining of Antonin Artaud’s Spurt of Blood, complete with giant bugs, limbs falling from the sky, and the hand of God. Still unproduced.

Drusilla is Dead

A play currently in progress that imagines Camus’ Caligula from a new perspective. With a small cast of Drusilla, Caligula, and Scipio, characters imagine what the fall of Rome could be. An excerpt of the play was performed at Sonorous Road’s Open Doors festival in 2016

The Amazing Cunt and Lil'Bitch Take [Your City]!

A dark comedy following the vigilante team “The Amazing Cunt and Lil’Bitch” as they take down rapists in an ambiguous locale. Deals with the idea of vigilante justice and the line between right and wrong. Produced by Women’s Theatre Festival and Gadfly Theater in 2016

Words About My Work

“Katy Koop isn’t afraid to shake things up. Drusilla Is Dead, her regional premiere as a playwright in June, traced the psychosexual madness of Albert Camus’s Caligula back to a sinister childhood nursery. Koop’s new one-act features two self-styled vigilantes—with their own theme song, no less—who avenge the city’s sexual assaults through ultraviolence. But after the audience snickered through the lyrics in the droll opening moments of The Amazing Cunt and Lil’Bitch Take Raleigh! last Saturday, one member of this crime-fighting duo explored her increasing misgivings about its brand of justice. As she did, Koop’s script unexpectedly veered from dark comedy to darker psychological drama.”

– Byron Woods in Superheroines Historical and Fantastical Power Two Memorable Women’s Theatre Festival Shows– IndyWeek

“Our play’s two heroes, from the brilliantly twisted mind of author Katy Koop, are anything but tragic. This does not mean that they do not experience defeat. Victims of sexual assault, The Amazing C*nt and her sidekick, L’il B*tch, take to the streets to torture and murder rapists. Rape Revenge stories are not new. Kill Bill, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I Spit on Your Grave, and even Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus play up the trope. Traditionally, we experience the assault with the character in order to find satisfaction in, and justify, the vengeance. The difference in Koop’s play is that our revenge-seeking heroes begin the play in media res — already justice-seekers, not victims […] On Thursday night, the sold out-room roared with laughter, gasped with fear, and gave some real verbal support to the characters. Through emotional flashbacks, sequences of shocking violence, and a morbidly sardonic wit, Katy Koop has written an exciting, powerful, and entertaining play that is well-executed and should not be missed. It is also the most effective use of The Green Monkey’s performance space that I have ever seen.”

— Dustin Britt in The Amazing C*nt and L’il B*tch Take Raleigh Packs a Punch at the Women’s Theatre Festival– Triangle Arts & Entertainment

“Several years ago, choreographer Sarah Skaggs staged Prelude to Salome at the American Dance Festival. Her solo comes to mind during Drusilla is Dead, the oddest offering among the serious plays, with its lucid depiction of disaster foretold. Katy Koop’s play is based on Camus’s Caligula. If it’s hard to imagine such a work being set in a children’s nursery, the reasoning soon becomes clear. As the Roman emperor’s sadistic sister, Drusilla (Victoria Mitchell), provokes the young Caligula (Alex Hubbell) to picture the scariest scenario he can imagine, something dark unfolds within them both, and the future of Rome trembles.”

— Byron Woods in Skirting the Line Between Theater and Sketch Comedy in One-Act Play Festival Open Doors– IndyWeek