About

About Anthea

Anthea Carns was born in Anchorage, Alaska; lived in Seattle, Washington for a year; started acting when she was eight; started stage managing when she was seventeen; started directing when she was twenty; started writing when she knew her alphabet; went to college at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; has driven from Alaska to Pittsburgh twice and from Pittsburgh to Alaska once; walked four hundred miles along El Camino Frances in the north of Spain in 2012; currently resides in Seattle; reads more than she should and draws less than she ought.

This blog showcases her work as a dramaturg, writer, theatre-maker, and scholar.

She also enjoys making origami cranes out of paper napkin wrappers.

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Artistic Philosophy

I’m deeply invested in a feminist, female-focused dramaturgy. I like to joke that any story or piece of media I like, I’d enjoy more if it had a female protagonist, or more lesbians, or both.

So: I want to see and create theatre that puts women front and center. I strive to tell stories that value women’s relationships with other women, romantic and otherwise, and that place female protagonists in the big classical conflicts: Woman vs. Nature, Woman vs. Self, Woman vs. Society. I also want to make these stories about women intersectional, and make space for directors and actors who are trans*, or disabled, or people of color, to create meanings in my plays that I haven’t even thought about yet. That part of my craft is a work in progress, and maybe always will be, but it’s exciting, too.

I’m drawn to collaboration, with living artists and with dead authors. A lot of my work focuses on adaptation and remixing – collaborating with artists, texts, and tropes from the past – and I enjoy working with a director and cast to shape an interesting idea into a good script and a great play.