In Memoriam: KATHI E.B. ELLIS
July, 2019
From LPTW Member Robin Rice.
Sometimes a person comes into your life and before you realize what’s happening you are changed. Kathi Ellis did that to me. Kathi died July 15 from metastatic breast cancer. She was so much more than a theatre director. She was an advocate for unheard-voices, a promoter of women in theatre, and one of the most organized, creative, collaborative, community-minded people I have ever known. Kathi didn’t like the spotlight for herself. In photographs, she always
looks like she’s trying to be somewhere else. I met Kathi when my drama Alice in Black and Whitevwas chosen by Lilith Theatre Company for a production at the Kentucky Center in Louisville. When I saw the production I was blown away.
Kathi had infused the narrative with choreographed movements, lifting up the (true) story from the realm of day-to-day to the place where imagination lives. The characters were alive and enchanting. Kathi had enhanced what I had seen in my magically-realistic mind when writing the play. It was perfect. It was beautiful.
Kathi went on to shepherd this play (with Lilith) to Off-Broadway at 59E59 Theatre in 2016, and to a second production at the Kentucky Center. Over the years Kathi and I spent many hours talking about theater when I went to Louisville for the Humana Festival and when she came to New York. Whenever I was in Louisville she invited me to tag along to other productions in town. She was a clear-eyed reviewer and an avid theatergoer and supporter of local theater companies, writers and actors. I don’t believe she ever missed a production in Louisville. Kathi didn’t talk about herself — her daughter Stephanie sometimes, and her life growing up in Middlesex, England, a little — but she preferred to talk about making
theatre. She lived and breathed theatre, sometimes directing multiple shows at the same time. Friends in Louisville tell me that she actually persuaded the staff to allow her to hold rehearsals in the hospital during her final weeks.
In March, Kathi traveled to New York City with Haydee Canovas and her play Just Like Us for a reading at LaMama. I met them for supper before the reading and clearly Kathi wasn’t at all well. Still — she traveled all that distance and even read the stage directions because she was not a woman who would let a little thing like cancer slow her down. In her matter-of-fact, delicate English accent she explained to me that the disease had metastasized. When we hugged goodbye I pretty much knew I’d never see her again.
When I’m undecided or in a pickle with a director or producer, my mantra now will be “What would Kathi do?” She was a consummate professional and strong as steel, but always kind, always looking at the big picture. We have lost one of our shining stars.
