Cat Gerrard (she/her) is a performer, storyteller, dramaturg and facilitator from London based in Berlin. She trained in acting at Drama Studio London and in collaborative performance-making at LISPA.
Cat’s work is multi-disciplinary and always created in an intuitive, devised, collaborative process. She has found herself constantly circling around the theme and embodiment of connection: how to find different ways, often in different spaces, to bring audiences into a playful encounter with performers. As Founder/Artistic Director of storytelling company TailSpin, she curated and ran the monthly storytelling evening - Night of the Storyteller- and annual festival - The Story Bazaar - in London for 5 years, alongside collaborator Bel Sherlock. TailSpin events created communal space for sharing story and experimenting with form and became a strong community hub for artists and audience.
As a performer, Cat has long explored site-specific work: from pop-up puppetry projects; to outdoors theatre in urban and rural spaces; and now to clowning. Her film/clown project Somewhere, Maybe Here, follows a fallen angel arriving to Berlin and spontaneously encountering people in the street. This research developed, through meeting Robert McNeer and the clown learning community of La Luna Nel Pozzo, into project Posta Aerea.
Photo by Adi Weinberg
Cat’s work – and life – is strongly influenced by story, storycarrying and storytelling – from the personal to the mythic, the individual to the collective. She is never-endingly curious about how we might embody story and metaphor, how we can re-story ourselves and re-vivify our imaginations in what her teacher Martin Shaw has called the current “pandemic of the literal”.
In 2015, Cat began facilitating at LISPA (later arthaus.berlin), teaching across the breadth of the MA/MFA pedagogy and, later on, on the BA Acting course at Cours Florent Berlin, teaching foundational and applied breathing and voice techniques. She is a guest lecturer for a number of other schools, programmes and workshops. Her work draws on: different aspects of the LeCoq pedagogy; the practice and philosophy of Tai Chi; the principles and performative forms of puppetry and storytelling; and her practices as a dramaturg. She is constantly developing her facilitation work, now focusing on ongoing cross-arts professional training and workshops/alternative formats alongside performances to give audiences a different access to performance/performers.
Cat took her training and early experience in directing (on the Young Vic Director’s Programme, London) and channeled it into what seemed more precise: working as a dramaturg. She dramaturgs primarily for nonverbal theatre and dance and seeks to integrate the various elements of a process: including the dynamics and interplay between the personal, interpersonal and artistic/transpersonal elements that are in each creative process.
Some of the projects and collaborations she is most proud of are: “If The Bull Won’t Come” (Adi Weinberg); “The Fantasist” (Theatre Témoin); “Cycles of the Southern Wild” (TailSpin); “Somewhere, Maybe Here” (Cat Gerrard).
When she is not doing all of the above, Cat is usually on her bike, practicing martial arts or sitting in a café reading something chewy.
You can read more about Cat and her work in her newsletter on Substack.