Katie Gilchrist is a mulit-hyphenate artist with a focus on "artistic first response".

As an artist, producer, and director she is inspired to civic engagement through purpose-driven storytelling, accessible and equitable opportunities for all, consent forward practices, and healthy doses of magic & mayhem. 

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Katie has directed dozens of readings/plays/musicals/burlesque and variety shows throughout her career. Her most recent directing projects include Big Love (Intimacy and Fight Direction); Lungs, Steel Magnolias (Broadway World KC Award for Best Director), Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties (Fishtank Theatre), and the upcoming productions of Stranger Sings (Padgett Productions), Dial M For Murder (Kansas City Actors Theatre), and Fire Work (Unicorn Theatre), respectively. 

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She is a the Creator/Creator of the1994projectKC, a year long series honoring the films and music of that year, while also using the series to raise funds for various charitable organizations in the Greater KC Metro Area. Katie is a member of the UMKC Conservatory Alumni Board, a Steering Committee Member of the AIDS Service Foundation of Greater KC; now leading their Memorial Flag Program; a member (on current hiatus) of the City of Fountains Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, whose mission is to promulgate joy and expiate stigmatic guilt throughout the LGBTQIA+ community;  the Artistic Director of Kansas City Strips (returning to our fundraising fullness in September 2024), a member of Amy Farrand and The Like, and a vocalist for Lost Wax.