Kathleen Marshall Biography
Kathleen Marshall is an American director, choreographer, and creative consultant who was born on September 28, 1962, Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.
Kathleen Marshall Rob Marshall
Kathleen Marshall’s older brother is film and theater director, producer, and choreographer, Rob Marshall (born 1960). Rob is the choreographer of Kiss of the Spider Woman. She began her Broadway career as an assistant to her brother Rob in 1993. The two also collaborated on She Loves Me (1993), Damn Yankees (1994), Victor/Victoria (1995) and Seussical (2000).
Marshall was the artistic director for the Encores! series of staged musical revivals from 1996 through 2000. She choreographed The Boys from Syracuse, Li’l Abner and Call Me Madam and both directed and choreographed Babes in Arms and Wonderful Town.
Kathleen Marshall Scott Landis
Marshall married her husband Scott Landis, a producer and former agent, in September 2009. They have two children, twins, Ella and Nathaniel, who were born in May 2010.
Kathleen Marshall Age
Marshall was born on September 28, 1962, Madison, Wisconsin. Her father was a Phd student and her mother was a teacher. Marshall is the younger sister of award-winning film and theater, producer, director, and choreographer, Rob Marshall. She is 56 years old as of 2018.
Kathleen Marshall Education
Marshall graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1980. She proceeded to Smith College, where she graduated in 1985. She worked in the Pittsburgh theatre scene when she was younger, performing with such companies as Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera.
Kathleen Marshall Anything Goes
Starting in April 2011, Kathyleen Marshall directed and choreographed a Broadway revival of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes with Sutton Foster starring as Reno Sweeney. Anything Goes is a 1934 musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The original book was a collaborative effort by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, heavily revised by the team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse.
The story concerns madcap antics aboard an ocean liner bound from New York to London. Billy Crocker is a stowaway in love with heiress Hope Harcourt, who is engaged to Lord Evelyn Oakleigh. Nightclub singer Reno Sweeney and Public Enemy #13, “Moonface” Martin, aid Billy in his quest to win Hope. The musical introduced such songs as “Anything Goes”, “You’re the Top”, and “I Get a Kick Out of You.
Kathleen Marshall Encores!
Kathleen Marshall was the artistic director for the Encores! series of staged musical revivals from 1996 through 2000. The Encores! production of Wonderful Town transferred to Broadway in November 2003 and ran until January 2005, with both direction and choreography by Marshall. She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical and Best Choreography.
Kathleen Marshall Grease
Kathleen Marshall was a judge on the NBC reality series Grease: You’re the One That I Want!. Viewers’ votes selected the stars of the August 2007 Broadway revival of Grease, which she directed and choreographed.
Kathleen Marshall Broadway
Swinging on a Star (1995) – choreographer
1776 (1997) – choreographer
Kiss Me, Kate (1999) – choreographer
Ring Round the Moon (1999) – choreographer
Follies (2001) – choreographer
Wonderful Town (2003) – director/choreographer
Little Shop of Horrors (2003) – choreographer
Two Gentlemen of Verona (2005) – director/choreographer, Public Theater
The Pajama Game (2006) – director/choreographer
Grease (2007) director/choreographer
Calvin Berger (2010) director/choreographer, George Street Playhouse, New Brunswick, New Jersey
Anything Goes (2011) director/choreographer
Nice Work If You Can Get It (2012) director/choreographer
In Transit, (2016) director/choreographer
Kathleen Marshall Interview
Living on Love starts previews on April 1st. How do you think your musical background helps you direct a play that is a comedy?
Kathleen Marshall: Living on Love, since it’s about a symphony director and his opera diva wife, music is a part of their lives and is woven through the play in some ways. I think that’s a natural fit for me for my first play. There are two servants, and we choreograph the transitions, and it’s all musicalized and part of the way we designed the piece, so it’s fun for me that there’s still some sort of movement and music to it. I’m thrilled this is my first play.
I always thought for my first play I wanted to do a comedy, and this is a comedy with some elements of farce to it, which I also feel is a natural progression because a lot of musicals I’ve done have had an element of farce to them, like Anything Goes and Nice Work If You Can Get It. It’s the same sort of thing you do with a comic musical where you need to create the reality of the situation and make these characters real and believable so when things go wrong you go there with them. Any good screwball comedy sets the foundation so when it spins off into something absurd we’re willing to go there with them.
Styles of comedy change over time. When you’re doing something that’s slightly from another era, is that something you think about? How to make it authentic to the style but also not alienating to a contemporary audience?
Kathleen Marshall: I think it’s an important thing to work with the writer since humor changes; what we think of as funny changes from one generation to another. I think it’s part of working with Joe DiPietro on Living on Love, and Nice Work or with Timothy Crouse, and John Weidman on Anything Goes, we did some updating on that too. You have to make sure, in the writing, that the humor is funny to a contemporary audience.
At Encores! I always talked about things that are cringe-worthy, and if you’re doing something from another era [you should make sure] that there’s nothing cringe-worthy. I remember in The Pajama Game, Prez, the president of the union, was a married letch who was always after all the girls and all the girls always turned him down, except the one girl who didn’t turn him down was the round girl. Well, that might have been fine for humor in the 1950s, but we didn’t think that was going to speak to a modern audience. So, with the permission of the estate, we adjusted it. In our version, Prez was sort of a nerd who still lived with his mother, who is chasing all of the girls, and the girl he got was sort of shy and tomboy-ish and sort of blossomed when they got together. So it still had humor in it but it was humor in a more palatable way for a contemporary audience.
What’s one of the differences in directing a play versus a musical in terms of process?
Kathleen Marshall: With a musical, you have musical numbers, and those give you a real outline and structure of where you’re going. You might only have a three-page scene and a song, and you might already have a staging idea for the song, and the scene has to lead you into that song. So it’s a little more structured that way.
In a play you can decide more, since there are bigger arcs to cover and you’re making up your own tempo in a play. Whereas in a musical, because of songs and transitions and underscoring, there might be more built-in rhythm. You have pockets of your own rhythm in between, but then you get back on that ride and that rhythm takes over.
One of the things we always think is interesting about directing is how directors manage working with different actors and their different processes.
Kathleen Marshall: One of my definitions of directing is figuring out what to say to who, and when. You’re all in a process of discovery. You may have an idea of where you’re heading, but you can’t just go to it—you have to find your way to it and sort of spiral into it. I always feel like I don’t have to do it eight times a week, the actors do, so what do they need to create a performance that not only can be successful and meaningful to them and to an audience, but also that they can sustain over a long run. Some actors like to be very loosey goosey and find their way to it, and some people want to get the blocking and the framework and then fill that in. So you have to negotiate that in some ways. As a director, you’re their first audience so you’re sort of giving feedback about what’s going to work and what’s going to work for them.
How much do you think about directing an audience?
Kathleen Marshall: As a director, right from the beginning, you’re making an unofficial compact with the audience. And as a director, it’s your responsibility to figure out, “Well, what is this compact with the audience? And are we going to honor that compact throughout?” So the curtain goes up on a realistic living room set and it’s like, “Okay, this is a fourth wall play and I am a voyeur watching this.” That’s the compact you’re setting up.
If, halfway through, someone turned towards the audience and broke the fourth wall and started delivering narration, it would be jarring—unless you’re trying to be jarring. I think you have the first five to ten minutes of the show to set up the style of the show for the audience and tell them what type of evening they’re in for, and I think that’s important. I think an audience is either going to relax into it and say, “Yes, take me on this journey,” or they’ll be confused or not engaged if you don’t roll it out correctly.