ARDEN OF FAVERSHAM
Co-adapter (with playwright Jeffrey Hatcher) of the Elizabethan true crime thriller, in production spring 2023 Off-Broadway with Red Bull Theater. Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Adaptation.
It’s Valentine’s Day and Alice Arden wants her husband dead. He’s come into money and all she can think about is her lover, Mosby. So, the pair enter into a pact to murder Arden and engage a cluster of killers to do the deed. If only they weren’t so spectacularly inept. Inspired by actual events, this sexy thriller of unknown authorship – some say, Shakespeare – is a bloody, darkly comic Elizabethan noir.
THE ECHO DRIFT
Co-librettist of a new opera by composer Mikael Karlsson, about temptation, seduction, and solitary confinement.
World premiere in the 2018 PROTOTYPE festival of music-theater in New York, produced and commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects, HERE, and American Opera Projects.
“Stark and intricate, propulsive and a little film-noir.”
– New York Times
“Everything about this presentation was virtuoso.”
– New York Observer
Featured in "Working in Theatre: Chamber Opera" and in Opera News.
JASON & THE ARGONAUTS
An opera for young audiences, commissioned and produced by Lyric Opera of Chicago as part of their Lyric Unlimited series.
A collaboration with composer Gregory Spears, the piece is based on the ancient myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece.
In fall 2016, it was performed for over 20,000 young audience members in Chicago neighborhoods. A remount is scheduled for 2020.
SEE BAT FLY
A play about the awesome aerodynamics of bats, the magic of an all-night diner on Route 66, and a dysfunctional tequila Christmas that sets Melanie free.
It was developed at the Orchard Project, and received a workshop production at Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep.
Named on the Kilroy's List of the 46 most recommended plays by women in 2014.
PAUL'S CASE
A chamber opera for which I co-wrote the libretto, with composer Gregory Spears. It is an adaptation of Willa Cather's short story of the same title. World premiere at Urban Arias (Virginia). Also produced at PROTOTYPE Festival (NYC) and Pittsburgh Opera.
“New York’s newest opera festival, PROTOTYPE...can claim its first masterpiece...with music by Gregory Spears and a libretto by Mr. Spears and Kathryn Walat, this gem [is] a perfect marriage of text and music.” – New York Observer
CREATION
A play about music, obsession, the creative process, and the unexpected spark that changes four lives.
World premiere at the Theatre @ Boston Court (Pasadena). Developed at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center/National Playwrights Conference.
Ovation Award for Playwriting nomination.
“Creation details the birth pangs of new art, new love, new selves... the play pushes beyond its cerebral premise toward something urgent and fully human.”
– Los Angeles Times
ANCIENT GODS OF
THE BACKWOODS
Greek tragedy undone and reset in a world of whiskey drinking, laughter yoga, and Patsy Cline's “Crazy” on loop on the jukebox.
Produced in excerpt under the title This Is Not Antigone as part of New George's (NY) Germ Project, for which it was commissioned.
“Playwright Kathryn Walat uses stylized, staccato language to create a bridge between modern naturalism and classical idiom...the piece has a kinetic, wild energy.” – NYtheatre.com
BLEEDING KANSAS
Set at the edge of the Wild West, as the divided nation takes a dangerous step towards Civil War.
World premiere at the Hangar Theatre (Ithaca), West Coast premiere at Moxie Theatre (San Diego).
Francesca Primus Award Citation, from the American Theatre Critics Association.
“Walat has smartly crafted complex characters... exploring how we arrive at our beliefs and the potentially dangerous implications of our convictions.”
– San Diego Union-Tribune
VICTORIA MARTIN:
MATH TEAM QUEEN
Can the fabulously popular Victoria Martin bring the Longwood High School Math Team to victory? Totally.
World premiere Off-Broadway at the Women's Project, West Coast premiere at Moxie Theatre (San Diego).
Published in New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2007.
“The tale about overcoming odds is surprisingly touching.” – Time Out New York
KNOW DOG
A curious love story spanning time, space, and species as it considers the trappings of domestication, canine and otherwise.
World premiere at Salvage Vanguard (Austin).
“Full of bite…Through lean, spare and sometimes lyrical language, Walat weaves a strange story about a young woman named Alice [in] this oddball comedy-drama-love story.” – Austin360