Katie McHugh is a New York based director, teacher and producer of theatre and film with a B.A. in Theatre from Florida State University and an MFA in directing from The New School for Drama. She is the Founding Director of the Southeastern Teen Shakespeare Company, Co-Founder of the Teen Shakespeare Conservatory at the Actors Movement Studio, Co-Founder of Les Exportables Theatre Company, and Artistic Director of Yonder Window Theatre Company. Katie is an award-winning director who specializes in devised and experimental theatre. As the Education Director of the Pensacola Little Theatre (2002 – 2008), her enthusiasm for educational theatre earned her a nomination for the Champion of the Arts Award, and the Big Read Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Katie directed over 50 productions in Florida before moving to New York to attend Graduate School.  Her New York directing credits include: Travis Winters by Nick Gandiello in the New York 15-Minute Play Festival (Winner of Best Play, Audience Choice Award, and Best Director), The Author’s Voice at The Cell Theater, Euripides’ Medea in the New School for Drama’s New Visions festival, Jubilation Mississippi by Stephen Bittrich in the Drilling Company’s Happiness festival, Producer and Director of The Winter Comedy Fest at Theatre 54, Dim Sum by Deborah Savadge in the Drilling Company's Debt festival, and The List by Jennifer Tremblay in the New York International Fringe Festival 2012 (Winner of Overall Excellence in a Solo Performance).  The List was chosen to perform internationally in the first Mexican Fringe Festival of San Miguel de Allende, October 2013. Film credits include: Co-director of “Off Off the Webseries” www.offoffwebseries.com, Director and Associate Producer of “Internet Affairs” www.internetaffairs.tv.  Katie also produced the Playwright’s Gallery reading series 2013-2014, and is a six-time director for the Writopia World Wide Plays Festival sponsored by David Letterman, as well as a guest director with the NYU dramatic writing program.  In 2013 Katie started a program for young actors focused on auditioning for college called the Audition Prep Intensive.  After directing her second production in Mexico in February of 2015, Waiting for Goddreau preceded by Shut up Kathleen, Katie was named an Artistic Ambassador of the Mexican Fringe Festival San Miguel.  She spent two months the following winter in Mexico working on the third annual Fringe Festival as well as co-producing Enemy, an adaptation of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People directed by Emmy award winner, Dorothy Lyman at the San Miguel Playhouse Theatre. In February of 2017 Yonder Window Theatre Company made its maiden voyage with a multidisciplinary, multicultural, bi-lingual international production called The Dream Project, at Muv arte gallery in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Since then, Yonder Window has produced with Katie as director, five shows:  PLACES at 59 East 59th Theatre’s East to Edinburgh Festival, then at The New Town Theatre in Edinburgh where it was performed 24 times; The House on Poe Street by Fengar Gael at the 14th Street Y Theatre, October 2017; Phase 2.0 of The Dream Project, held at the GK Art Center in Brooklyn, NY March 2018; Phase 3.0 of The Dream Project, the largest iteration yet of the project, performed in Montreal at Universcene Fall of 2019, and the most recent large scale devised production, The Creative Crusade, a virtual exploration and collaboration about solitude, Artists from 40 cities in 7 different countries created 8 pieces presented online in 2020. Katie has directed several virtual performances in 2021, including We Have to Hurry, a new virtual play by Dorothy Lyman and Gertrude written by Grant MacDermott as Yonder Window’s first Playwright in Residence, 2021. For the past two years Katie and her team, under the banner of Yonder Window, have worked to create a brand new platform for young artists in the Performing Arts, called Stagepunch.  This new company was launched at the end of 2021 and promises to be a huge success in the world of performing arts as the ultimate resource for a new generation of artists.

CV