KATHRYN ASH

As JUTE Theatre Company’s Creative Producer, Kathryn Ash is a Cairns-based playwright and dramaturg, working with the company writing development. She is a published playwright, having her scripts selected three times for workshopping within national theatre conferences, with an award-winning play Bag O’Marbles and over 25 produced plays to date. JUTE Theatre Company produced her most recent play Here We All Are. Assembled in 2017. She was playwright and writing mentor on an extensive Arts Festival program for Cairns City Council and Commonwealth Games in 2019 and co-writer of a highly acclaimed musical drama of Polynesian, Melanesian, and Indigenous Australian women in Woven by AustrNesia Choir in 2019. In that same year, she worked as dramaturg on the 2019 Matilda Award-Winning play The Longest Minute by Rob Kronk and Nadine MacDonald-Dowd.

During 2020, she was selected to participate in two national writing projects, Dear Australia for Playwriting Australia and Come To Where I Am by Critical Stages, both of which resulted in online presentation of her work through those two peak playwrighting bodies. Ash was also the driving force behind JUTE’s award-winning dramaturgical script development program, Enter Stage Write, which operated for 16 years, and opened long-term career pathways for over 25 regional playwrights, and she currently delivers the company’s script development program, Write Sparks.
She is a founding member of JUTE and continues her long relationship with a company that has grown to be a regional force in performance writing and theatre production.