Dr. Katie Turner

Email

Primary Email: [email protected]

Phone/Fax

Primary Phone: 619-594-4936

Building/Location

Dramatic Arts - 204A

Bio

Dr. Turner began as lecturer at SDSU in 2017. She is a Theatre Generalist and teaches various Theatre Arts courses in both the Undergraduate and Master’s programs. She is a scholar-practitioner, dedicated to academic research and theatrical production. Katie received her PhD from the University of California in Irvine in 2016, where she specialized in American Theatre and completed a dramaturgy emphasis. She also holds a Master of Arts degree in Theatre from California State University in Northridge and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre and Philosophy from Fort Lewis College.

 Katie has been an active part of the San Diego theatre scene since her arrival in 2008. She has worked for such companies as The Old Globe (electrics), Ion Theatre (stage management), and Cygnet Theatre (electrics). From 2011-2015, she served as the Founding Artistic Director and Technical Director of Clairemont Act One Community Theatre and ran Turnkey Theatre from 2020-2022, a company founded during the pandemic in collaboration with SDSU students. Katie is an accomplished teacher and performer of comedic improvisation, and has recently offered workshops for the Veterans Museum at Balboa Park and Turning Point Women’s Recovery Home. She is excited to join the cast of Historical Dining San Diego, which creates original historical murder mystery dinner shows.  Most recently, Dr. Turner became the Executive Director of the Meisner & Chekhov INtegrated Actor Training program in San Diego. 

Katie’s scholarship focuses on representations of women in American Theatre. Her dissertation, Damsels in Distress: Theatre, Anxiety, and the Feminine, takes a close look at the relationship between female characters in melodrama and American social anxieties in the 19th century. Katie is also a playwright. Her interactive gothic melodrama Iris & the Axe, which draws on her dissertation research, won the “Outside the Box” award at the San Diego Fringe Festival in 2022. She recently completed a workshop reading of her solo show Here, at the End, a dark comedy about being a person at our peculiar time in history and hopes to perform it in 2025.