A director, producer, and teaching artist, Kelly is passionate about making theater with artists and audiences of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities. Her experiences as a director and producer range from new play premieres to large-scale classics and from plays designed for a 500-seat proscenium to minimalist tours with a small ensemble and just a few costumes and props. She is drawn to plays that embrace bold theatricality and speak with courage, wit, and compassion to the world today.
Most recently, she directed MaConnia Chesser in An Iliad at Advice to the Players, Finding New Rhythms for Community Access to the Arts (CATA), and Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare & Company. Other recent credits include Mary’s Wedding at The Theater at Woodshill and Beasts at The Boston Playwrights’ Theatre.
Kelly has worked as a director and assistant for the Guthrie, Asolo Rep, Orlando Shakespeare Festival, Gloucester Stage, Catskill Mountain Shakespeare, Great Barrington Public Theater, WAM Theatre, Southwest Shakespeare Company (BroadwayWorld Regional Nomination, Best Director), Berkshire Playwrights’ Lab, and the BU School of Theatre. In 2016, she directed Livian Yeh’s Memorial for Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, which received an honorable mention for the 2017 Kilroys list. In 2017-2018, she received a Directing Fellowship with Asolo Repertory Theatre and completed an Artistic Development and Directing Internship with Arena Stage. She has also held observerships with the Huntington Theatre Company and Bedlam NYC.
Kelly is a Program Director at CATA in Great Barrington, MA, which nurtures and celebrates the creativity of people with disabilities through the arts. She has been a company artist with Shakespeare & Company since 2008 and is also the founder of the rig, a grassroots organization in Western MA working to create connections through the arts and to redistribute art and cultural resources to a larger portion of the community. She also served as the Artistic Associate at WAM Theatre where she created and produced the inaugural Fresh Takes Play Reading Series.
She attended Wellesley College where she studied Political Theory and Boston University where she received an MFA in directing and certificate in arts administration. She is the oldest of four sisters, shares a birthday with Jane Austen, and has never met a potato chip she didn’t like.