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Karen
Christopher
Age:
39
Title: Actress, Video Maker
University/Training: BA in Theatre Arts, Pomona College–Claremont, Calif. (Thomas Leabhart: corporeal mime; Leonard Pronko: Kabuki dance); Padua Hills Playwrights’ Workshop/Festival; MFA in Film and Video, Columbia College Chicago.
Recent/Current Projects: Goat Island: It’s an Earthquake in My Heart; The Sea & Poison; workshops with Goat Island and with Greg Allen at the Neo-Futurarium; Goat Island writing projects for public speaking and publication; and various video projects, including a segment for "Art Beat Chicago" on Goat Island and patient narrative videos for the Program in Communication and Medicine at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
How has your training/college education helped prepare you for a career in theatre?: I got to learn the importance of a community of people working together. This was partly as a result of having to work on mandatory crew assignments and on projects that were not in my main field of vision, and because of the close community that exists in a residential college setting. I also had the luxury of time, equipment and space to work on independent projects without undue financial constraints. I didn’t learn how to negotiate the business of theatre–a constant learning process that began once I got out of school.
Why did you choose to ply your craft in Chicago?: Because I didn’t need a car and there seemed to be real theatre here, and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg to survive.