Short Bio
kt shorb (BM, Oberlin Conservatory; MA, UT-Austin) is a director, actor, and Ph.D. candidate in Performance as Public Practice at the University of Texas at Austin. They are the producing artistic director of the Generic Ensemble Company. Directorial credits include: black girl love: an adaptation project, The Women of __, Carmen, 893 | Ya-ku-za, Scheherazade, and The Mikado: Reclaimed. Under kt's leadership, GenEnCo’s work has earned multiple B. Iden Payne and Austin Critics’ Choice nominations. shorb grew up in Massachusetts, rural Japan, and Tokyo. They have served as faculty at Southwestern University and UT-Austin and currently is a directing fellow at Wolf Trap Opera.
Long Bio
kt shorb is a multi-disciplinary artist who grew up in Massachusetts, rural Japan, and Tokyo. They hold a Bachelor’s degree in music composition from Oberlin College Conservatory and an MA in Radio-Television-Film from the University of Texas at Austin. They are trained in the Suzuki Acting Method and Viewpoints with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company as well as with Simon Woods of Zen Zen Zo (Brisbane, Australia). They have studied acting with Adelina Anthony and directing with Pirrone Yousefzadeh and KJ Sanchez. They have trained in Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed with Julian Boal and Bárbara Santos. They are currently a candidate for a PhD in Performance as Public Practice at the University of Texas at Austin.
shorb is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Generic Ensemble Company, a troupe that foregrounds marginal bodies in collaborative, ensemble-based work. As a director, shorb facilitates physical virtuosity and intensity. Directing credits with Generic Ensemble Company include: black girl love: an adaptation project (2019), Carmen (2018), 893 | Ya-ku-za (2018), Scheherazade (2017), winner of a B. Iden Payne Award for Outstanding Actor in a Featured Role and B. Iden Payne nominee for Outstanding Original Script, The Mikado: Reclaimed (2016), a mostly-Asian American, racially conscientious, radical adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s classic set in an internment camp in the future; Robin Hood: An Elegy (2015; by Krysta Gonzales), examining #blacklivesmatter through the well-known myth; a devised, site-specific, roving theatrical event based on Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan called What's Goin' On? (2014); winner of an Open Meadows Foundation Grant and Creative Fund Q Rental Subsidy grant, The Experiment (2012; co-written by Ana-Maurine Lara); the site-specific devised performance, Before This Was Texas (2011) at the UT Visual Arts Center; and an all-women of color play inspired by Waiting for Godot called Stuck on Gee-Dot (2010). Their directorial work with creator-performers include: The Psychopomp Project by Wendy Vastine (2014); Radio Kaduna and a tortoise walks majestically on window ledges by Guggenheim Fellow, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, presented at The Pulitzer Foundation and the Menil Collection (2013); and two works by Natalie Goodnow, EAGLE WOMAN POEMS (2010) and MUD OFFERINGS (2009). shorb has also directed FronteraFest "Best of Fest" winner, Dice (2012; by Candyce Rusk) and by a quiet sea (2009; by Wura-Natasha Ogunji).
shorb's solo performance, Una Corda (2010, Yvan Greenber, dir), has been performed excerpted and in-full at the Philadelphia COLLAGE Collaborative Arts Festival, the Los Angeles Women's Theatre Festival, Oberlin College, Southwestern University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Alma de Mujer Center for Social Change, Co-Lab Austin, and the University of Chicago. Other performance credits include: "Old Shady" in Men on Boats (Jaclyn Backhaus, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, 2018), "1" in 893 | Ya-ku-za (VORTEX and Victory Garden's Theatre, 2018), "Theseus" in A Midsummer Nights Dream (Scottish Rite, 2014), "Dr. Drexler/Dancer," in Still Now (2014), and “Count Thurzo” in Vampyress ( 2010).
As a writer, shorb focuses on the relationship between social structures (such as race and sexuality) and personal expression. Their poetry/prose piece, “prelude and fugue in yellow and grey” appears in the anthology, Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian Pacific American Activists. Two of their essays appear in The Blind Chatelaine’s Keys, edited by Eileen Tabios. Their story, “Hara-chigai” was a finalist for the 2009 Fish Publications Short Story Prize.
They have served as judge/panelist for the City of Austin Cultural Contracts Core Grant (2016, 2018), the B. Iden Payne Committee (2011-12); the Leeway Foundation in Philadelphia (2010), and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York City (2007).
They are currently collaborating with Katherine Wilkinson on a new solo performance piece about the body and desire called Inappropriate. They were a 2015 invited fellow at the Peer Leadership Exchange for the National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation in Minneapolis, hosted by Pangea World Theater and Art2Action.
They have served as faculty at Southwestern University (Theatre) and the University of Texas at Austin and will begin teaching at St. Edwards University in Fall 2019.
shorb is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Generic Ensemble Company, a troupe that foregrounds marginal bodies in collaborative, ensemble-based work. As a director, shorb facilitates physical virtuosity and intensity. Directing credits with Generic Ensemble Company include: black girl love: an adaptation project (2019), Carmen (2018), 893 | Ya-ku-za (2018), Scheherazade (2017), winner of a B. Iden Payne Award for Outstanding Actor in a Featured Role and B. Iden Payne nominee for Outstanding Original Script, The Mikado: Reclaimed (2016), a mostly-Asian American, racially conscientious, radical adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s classic set in an internment camp in the future; Robin Hood: An Elegy (2015; by Krysta Gonzales), examining #blacklivesmatter through the well-known myth; a devised, site-specific, roving theatrical event based on Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan called What's Goin' On? (2014); winner of an Open Meadows Foundation Grant and Creative Fund Q Rental Subsidy grant, The Experiment (2012; co-written by Ana-Maurine Lara); the site-specific devised performance, Before This Was Texas (2011) at the UT Visual Arts Center; and an all-women of color play inspired by Waiting for Godot called Stuck on Gee-Dot (2010). Their directorial work with creator-performers include: The Psychopomp Project by Wendy Vastine (2014); Radio Kaduna and a tortoise walks majestically on window ledges by Guggenheim Fellow, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, presented at The Pulitzer Foundation and the Menil Collection (2013); and two works by Natalie Goodnow, EAGLE WOMAN POEMS (2010) and MUD OFFERINGS (2009). shorb has also directed FronteraFest "Best of Fest" winner, Dice (2012; by Candyce Rusk) and by a quiet sea (2009; by Wura-Natasha Ogunji).
shorb's solo performance, Una Corda (2010, Yvan Greenber, dir), has been performed excerpted and in-full at the Philadelphia COLLAGE Collaborative Arts Festival, the Los Angeles Women's Theatre Festival, Oberlin College, Southwestern University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Alma de Mujer Center for Social Change, Co-Lab Austin, and the University of Chicago. Other performance credits include: "Old Shady" in Men on Boats (Jaclyn Backhaus, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, 2018), "1" in 893 | Ya-ku-za (VORTEX and Victory Garden's Theatre, 2018), "Theseus" in A Midsummer Nights Dream (Scottish Rite, 2014), "Dr. Drexler/Dancer," in Still Now (2014), and “Count Thurzo” in Vampyress ( 2010).
As a writer, shorb focuses on the relationship between social structures (such as race and sexuality) and personal expression. Their poetry/prose piece, “prelude and fugue in yellow and grey” appears in the anthology, Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian Pacific American Activists. Two of their essays appear in The Blind Chatelaine’s Keys, edited by Eileen Tabios. Their story, “Hara-chigai” was a finalist for the 2009 Fish Publications Short Story Prize.
They have served as judge/panelist for the City of Austin Cultural Contracts Core Grant (2016, 2018), the B. Iden Payne Committee (2011-12); the Leeway Foundation in Philadelphia (2010), and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York City (2007).
They are currently collaborating with Katherine Wilkinson on a new solo performance piece about the body and desire called Inappropriate. They were a 2015 invited fellow at the Peer Leadership Exchange for the National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation in Minneapolis, hosted by Pangea World Theater and Art2Action.
They have served as faculty at Southwestern University (Theatre) and the University of Texas at Austin and will begin teaching at St. Edwards University in Fall 2019.