Meet Cat Priamos
Cat is an artist-scholar whose work centers on trauma-proofing the acting classroom and developing consent-based, collaborative, anti-racist, and holistic theatre pedagogy.
Cat is a graduate of the University of Missouri - Columbia’s Department of Theatre & Performance’s doctoral program. Their dissertation analyzes American acting education’s impact on student-actor wellbeing and proposes changes to higher education acting classrooms in the form of trauma-informed pedagogy that centers on harm reduction and increased actor and teacher wellbeing.
Trained in the Stanislavskian System, the Meisner Technique, and the Strasbergian Method, as well as many years of Viewpoints Actor Training, Cat’s research and pedagogy does not follow either the inside-out or outside-in models of training. Instead, their dissertation research and subsequent pedagogy focuses on embodied acting, informed by the latest neurological and psychological understandings of the body and the polyvagal theory to create holistic acting experiences that values psychology- and body-based work equally.
As a director, they have worked within a large array of genres, from Early Modern Century theatre, to surrealism, to contemporary realism. Much of their directing has been new student-written work, productions for regional semi-professional theaters, and university productions. Most recently, their direction of UC Riverside’s Brown Face won five awards at The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) for Region 8, including Special Achievement in Direction by Faculty Artists, Special Achievement in the Production of a New Work, and The Citizen Artist Awards.
Cat is an intimacy choreographer with over 60 hours of training from Theatrical Intimacy Education (TIE) and Intimacy Coordinators of Color (ICOC). Some of their intimacy & violence choreography credits include Cabaret, The Rocky Horror Show, Votes for Women, A Movie Star has to Star in Black and White, and Funnyhouse of a Negro. As a disabled theatre artist themselves and a member of the disabled community, Cat has also acted as a Disability Performance Coach for Waiting for Godot, specifically working with the student-actor in developing the physicality and performance of Pozzo.
Also a trained stage manager, Cat has mostly worked with regional semi-professional theaters as well as university educational theatre departments. Having stage managed many genres, from period pieces to large ensemble musicals, their favorite work has been developing and running brand new, original shows.