Bio

Kelly is an NYC based theater producer, dramaturg, and director. She works in a wide range of forms including new plays, large-scale arts festivals, Broadway-bound musicals, site-specific theater, live music, immersive audio experiences, theatrical guided tours, and devised work. She was recently appointed Keen Theater Company's Artistic Director--a celebrated Off-Broadway theater company now in it's 25th year. She's also a Lecturer in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at the Yale School of Drama where she teaches the Passion Projects with Rebecca Rugg and Catherine Sheehy.

 

From 2021 to 2024, she was the Artistic Director of Oklahoma City Repertory Theater, where she restored the dormant company into the top contemporary theater in the region. Under her tenure, OKC Rep produced 13 shows including world premieres, a collaboration with the NBA Thunder, and she created a partnership with the Under the Radar Festival. She also envisioned and creative directed the theater's visual identity and activated the lobby with community events and activities.

 

From 2017 to 2021, she was at The Public Theater where she produced world premiere plays and musicals including Soft Power (Pulitzer finalist) by David Henry Hwang & Jeanine Tesori, M’lima’s Tale by Lynn Nottage, and Girl from the North Country by Conor McPherson.

At the same time, she produced the Under the Radar Festival where she worked with artists from over twenty countries and six continents, and she produced the Devised Theater Working Group. One of her favorite projects was transforming The Public's lobby into a performance space for Choir! Choir! Choir! with a surprise appearance by David Byrne.

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In 2016, she received the Mark Bly Creative Capacities Fellowship to support POP! A Pop-Up Performance Festival, which she conceived, curated, and produced featuring brand-new theater experiences by 17 emerging artists throughout Bushwick, Brooklyn including a speakeasy, an empty lot, several rock venues, and one automobile.

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At Yale School of Drama, she was the co-artistic director for the Yale Cabaret's 46th Season. Kelly has worked on the artistic staff Yale Rep, Steppenwolf, Atlantic, The House Theatre of Chicago, and Collaboraction. She co-founded Guided Tour, a site-specific, live art experience providing fake tours of real spaces, and she co-founded  Chicago's Salonathon--a weekly series specializing in underground performance. She's directed at OKC Rep, Ars Nova's ANT Fest, Collaboraction, Yale Cabaret​​, and in an illegal warehouse in Chicago.

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She lives in Manhattan with her husband, set designer Edward T. Morris, George the rescue dog, and her daughter, Domino.

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