Film, Voice & Theatre director
Kate Jopson
Photo by Cameron Thrower
Kate specializes in telling stories about history and the environment. She was a 2014 National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow where she developed The Cherry Orchard Project which delved into her rural Northern CA hometown’s experiences with fire and drought. The project culminated in 2018 with the play Hole in the Sky written by nationally-renowned playwright Octavio Solis that was performed at a theatre in Kate’s hometown and at a horse ranch nearly destroyed by fire in Los Angeles. Building on The Cherry Orchard Project, Kate is directing a documentary titled Springs Eternal about ongoing water conflicts in her hometown.
Her other live-performance directing credits include Maria Irene Fornes’ Fefu and Her Friends performed at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House (UNESCO World Heritage Site); Second Skin performed on beaches in Southern CA (LA Weekly Best Theatre of 2016); A Willow Grows Aslant an immersive adaptation of Hamlet performed at La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls Festival; Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time at Greenway Court Theatre in West Hollywood; The Mad Hatter Gin & Tea Party, an immersive Alice in Wonderland experience in Hollywood; Twelfth Night at Coeurage Theatre Company in Burbank.
She also puts her foreign language skills to play directing, adapting and performing in dubbing projects for Netflix, Amazon, Hulu/Disney, and HBOmax. Some of her favorites are The Head of Joaquin Murrieta (Amazon), Sam: A Saxon (Hulu), Perfect Life (HBOmax); Valley of Tears (HBOmax); Money Heist - From Tokyo to Berlin (Netflix); and On The Spectrum (HBOmax).
Her first short film Protect & Serve was based on the killing of Tamir Rice by police in Cleveland (Pasadena International Film Fest., Dam Short Film Fest). Her web series The Web Opera about cyberbullying and privacy violations has been accepted to over thirty film festivals and received multiple awards.
Formerly, she was Artistic Director of the critically-acclaimed Circle X Theatre Company. In 2019, she formed her own film and experiential performance company, ALISO, that explores the gaps and silences in our society. B.A in Anthropology from UC Berkeley; M.F.A in Directing from UC San Diego.
