Laura Kressly

Profile

Laura is an American freelance theatre critic and dramaturg who originally trained and worked as an actor and director. She also works broadly across theatre and education in various capacities, and is a copy and content writer and editor. Past and present work therefore includes wide variation, from teaching Acting to children, to writing content for apps, to proofreading PhD theses. She also co-founded and produced all productions and education contracts for River Productions from 2009 through 2014.

Her current primary practices however, are criticism and dramaturgy. After starting to review theatre and performance in 2013, in 2015 she founded theatre criticism platform The Play’s the Thing UK. The National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center awarded her a fellowship in 2017. Bylines include Exeunt, Fest Magazine, The British Council’s Theatre & Dance Blog, The Skinny, Focus Magazine, Wales Arts Review and Show-score. Recent production dramaturgy credits include productions at the Blue Elephant, CPT, and Camden Fringe. She consults extensively on new plays in development, and is a reader for The Bruntwood Prize and The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s annual New Play Conference.

She is currently writing a PhD thesis on embedded theatre criticism practice at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where she works as a visiting lecturer. She is a co-editor of and contributor to the 2022 edited collection of essays, Notelets of Filth: an Emilia companion reader.