Katie Cappiello is an award-winning theater creator and acting teacher specializing in Method-based technique training. With a drama degree from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Katie has spent over 18 years sharing her love for theater and acting with young people worldwide, while also writing, directing and producing critically-acclaimed plays that shed light on pressing social issues. Katie has been honored by the National Women’s Hall of Fame and named one of New York’s New Abolitionists along side Meryl Streep, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Senator John Lewis. In 2015, Katie was invited to The White House and The US Department of State to speak about the power of theater arts as a tool for policy and cultural change. In 2016, Katie launched GoodCapp Arts, a theater arts production company and training studio for young artists.
Katie is recognized by leading talent agencies and casting directors as one of the top youth acting coaches in the country. She has guided hundreds of kids and teens to countless professional successes including roles in award-winning Broadway productions, hit TV series, and blockbuster films such Mary Poppins, School of Rock, The Sound of Music, Chaplin: The Musical, The Lion King, Matilda, Billy Eliot, The Americans, Shameless, Orange is the New Black, The Good Wife, Grey’s Anatomy, Law & Order Special Victims Unit, Dark Knight Rises, Lullaby, New Year’s Eve andThe Switch.
Katie also prepares young actors for performing arts school auditions. Her students have been accepted to LaGuardia High School, Professional Performing Arts Middle/High School, Frank Sinatra High School, The Professional Children’s School, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Wagner, Yale, Boston University, Juilliard, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA, USC, CalArts, Syracuse, Ithaca, Northwestern, Emerson, Rutgers, The New School, Muhlenberg College, SUNY Purchase, SUNY New Paltz, and Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
Katie began her teaching career straight out of college at The Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute in New York City, serving as head instructor for the Young Actors Program for five years.
During this time, inspired by the loving memory of her student Celia Rose T. Fitzgerald, Katie launched The PossEble Theater Company with fellow NYU alumni. As Artistic Director, Katie oversaw the ensemble’s grassroots theater productions and arts education initiatives. The PossE staged Leslye Headland’s Cinephilia, Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Den of Thieves, and Eric Bogosian’s Suburbia (to name a few); all proceeds went toward building theater programming in Title I schools, serving over a thousand students throughout the five boroughs.
In 2007, Katie established The Arts Effect NYC, a dramatic arts school that provided intensive acting training and theater-based activism opportunities for tri-state youth. Under Katie’s artistic direction, The Arts Effect was named The Best Theater Program for Kids and Teens in NYC by Nickelodeon’s Parents Connect, and in its nine years of operation, developed free theater events in cities nationwide designed to ignite conversations and advocacy around the challenges facing young people today, such as social media pressure, damaging gender norms, sexual assault and human trafficking. The Arts Effect also implemented empowering educational theater workshops for elementary school girls (Operation: Girl Power), children with Autism (The Rebecca School), and youth struggling with Asthma (Asthma Free School Zone).
Katie is the writer, director and producer of six plays: Keep Your Eyes Open, Facebook Me, SLUT, A Day in the Life, Now That We’re Men and Her Story, Uncut. Her pieces have been developed in collaboration with young artists, feature teen actors and have been performed at historic venues such as The Cherry Lane Theatre (NY), The Lynn Redgrave Theater (NY), The Warner Theater (DC), The Billy Wilder Theater (LA), The Wong Auditorium (MA) and The United Nations. The plays are available for license and have been produced internationally in Mexico, Australia and Canada. The Feminist Press is the publisher of SLUT and Now That We’re Men, and Katie’s first book, SLUT: A Play and Guidebook for Combatting Sexism and Sexual Violence.
In her years creating theater for social justice Katie has collaborated with and has been commissioned by national and global organizations such as The United Nations, Equality Now, FAIRGirls, National Organization for Women, Sanctuary for Families, The Ms. Foundation, Women Moving Millions, Planned Parenthood, The Feminist Press, Girls for Gender Equity, and VDay.
Katie is one of the co-creators of Project Impact, a leadership-through-storytelling workshop for youth and adult human trafficking survivors that utilizes theater techniques to empower commercially sexually exploited women and girls to share their voices. In conjunction with Project Impact, Katie also developed Generation Free, a youth-driven advocacy community that utilizes the arts to raise awareness about trafficking and trains high school students to lobby lawmakers.
Through her work with Equality Now, Katie is currently aiding in educational outreach efforts around the issue of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Her play, Her Story, Uncut, is inspired by the real lives of teen girls impacted by the practice in Africa, UK, US and Asia, and will be performed in NYC, DC, LA and Africa this year for lawmakers, community leaders and students.
Katie facilitates workshops and lectures on political theater and the need for creative outlets for youth activism, along with rape culture, healthy sexuality and the universal benefit of feminism and artistic feminist spaces. She has presented her work as part of Tedx, Talks@Google, The Brooklyn Conference, The Harlem Book Fair, ReGender Summit (GA), Art and Conversation at The Hammer Museum (LA), It's Never Okay: A Summit to Stop Sexual Violence and Harassment (Toronto, Canada), FRESH TALK at The National Museum of Women in the Arts (DC); and at high schools and colleges throughout the US.
Katie is originally from Brockton, MA.