Artistic Director - Dorothy Cosby Atkinson
Dorothy Cosby Atkinson has been a long-time
theatre artist and performed in 25+ stage
productions from high school to college. She
graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a BA in
Theatre Arts in 1999, with an emphasis in act-
ing and directing and an interest in movement
theatre. She has continued her education at
Freehold Studio/ Theatre Lab in Seattle 2001 to
the present, taking several classes including Meyerhold's
Biomechanics and Movement II & III with George Lewis, Grotowski
Plastiques and Corporals with Joseph Lavy, Alexander Technique
with Lynne Compton, Physical Theatre: Viewpoints and Suzuki with
John Abramson and Cyrus Khambatta, Stage Combat with Geof
Alm, and Advanced Directing with Bartlett Sher.
Dorothy founded Edge Theatre Ensemble in Seattle in 2001, with
the support of many inspired collaborators. She has assistant-
directed several professional productions, including Our Town at
Intiman Theatre with Bartlett Sher, Crowns at Intiman Theatre with
Jacque Moscou, Not About Heroes at San Jose Stage with Michael
Butler, and Lie of the Mind at ACT (Rebound One Productions)
with Robin Lynn Smith. She was awarded the first Directing
Internship at San Jose Stage in CA in 2000, and received the
Gretchen B. Johnson Scholarship to produce Baby with the
Bathwater in the Seattle Fringe Festival in 2002.
In the summer of 2004, Dorothy participated in Ellen Stewart’s La
MaMa International Directors Symposium in Umbria, Italy, where
she studied with Richard Schechner on Site-Specific Theatre,
Rhodessa Jones on Theatre as Activism, Maxine Klein on Political
Theatre, Liangtee Tue on Chinese Opera, Bernardo Rey on
Mask and Performance, and Vito Taufer on Theatre & Melancholy.
Productions directed include: Explain This! (collaboration; original
work, In the Aisles Productions, UCSC and Edinburgh Fringe
Festival), One Sure Thing (original work, Newark Arts Academy),
The Frog Prince (musical with 85 young actors, Ben Lomand Little
Theatre) The Batting Cage (lab, Freehold Studio/ Theatre Lab),
Baby with the Bathwater by Christopher Durang (Edge Theatre
Ensemble, Seattle Fringe Festival 2002), 27 Wagons Full of
Cotton by Tennessee Williams (lab, Freehold Studio/ Theatre
Lab), Lysistrata (street performance, The Lysistrata Project),
Antigone by Sophocles (Edge Theatre Ensemble, Seattle Fringe
Festival 2003), Taming of the Shrew (an experiment, Freehold
Studio/ Theatre Lab), The Ceremony of the Death of the Individual
and the Dreams of Kim Sun-Il (original performance piece,
International Directors Symposium, La MaMa, Umbria Italy), Hamlet
and the Gambler (original performance piece, International
Directors Symposium, La MaMa, Umbria Italy), Angels in America
(a scene, IDS, La MaMa, Umbria, Italy.), Marriage Play, by Edward
Albee (Anton Productions, Theatre Off Jackson), three original
performance pieces in Si Molesto Con Mi Canto: a Concert of New
Socio-Political Works, (Edge Theatre Ensemble, Chamber
Theatre), Around the Clock, by Kelley Faulkner (Freehold New
Play Festival), and A Dream Play by August Strindberg, newly
adapted by Caryl Churchill (Edge Theatre Ensemble, Freehold
Theatre.)
Dorothy teaches acting classes at Bellevue Community College, as
well as teaching privately. She is a certified Actor Combatant and
Member of the Society of American Fight Directors (SAFD).
