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Kate

Abbruzzese

Performance Faculty

Kate studied drama, psychology, and a smattering of literature and poetry at Vassar College, where she also participated in the selective Vassar Improv and Vassar Shakespeare Troupe. Her senior project, playing Lady Macbeth in an all-female Macbeth at Vassar’s Powerhouse Theatre, earned her the Molly Thatcher Kazan Memorial Prize. After graduation, she apprenticed at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival and subsequently spent four years acting regionally before entering NYU's Graduate Acting Program, where she received her MFA and the Olympia Dukakis and Ron Van Lieu Scholarships. While at NYU, she wrote and directed her first play, which was one of four selected to be performed for prospective students during audition weekend.

Kate has acted in 17 of Shakespeare's works and written several of her own plays based on Shakespeare's characters: Before the Storm, an exploration of Caliban and Miranda's relationship prior to The Tempest; Motley Fool, an imagining of Rosalind and Orlando's marriage after As You Like It; and An Evening With the Macbeths, a vignette examining the domestic side of Shakespeare’s most infamous couple. The latter two received a place in Red Bull Theatre Company's Short Play Festival in 2016 and 2019, respectively. Kate’s full-length play, Thick My Blood, was selected for development at the Bethany Arts Community Fall 2021 residency, and was a semifinalist for the 2022 O’Neill Playwrights Conference. In 2022, Kate became a proud member of the Actors Center in New York City.

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