About
Erin-Kate has had a long life in the theatre, but it did take a back seat to only doing about 1 musical theatre stage performance run every 18 months or so. Despite the fact that she was a best-selling author on Amazon in business categories and had a successful business doing growth strategy for emerging food brands, and keeping her feet wet on San Francisco stages, Erin-Kate was not feeling fulfilled.The years taken raising her 2 sons were mostly spent in corporate leadership gigs in either sales or operations. Always a student of human behavior, Erin-Kate was a good manager, tough and demanding, but also kind and nurturing to those open to that style of management and mentorship. In her many travels as a “road warrior”, Erin-Kate ran into an awful lot of people across the United States and heard many stories about how life was in each of their corners of the world. People and their stories were always at the core of what EK actually cared about.In 2020, that super special year that started the COVID19 lockdowns, Erin-Kate started to ruminate on what she could do to pull together her worlds of USA travel, meeting people, performing and, most importantly, making a difference. She always felt like she was supposed to do that - that just being alive and a pretty good person was insufficient. She had a purpose and was driven to figure out what that was. Also that year, she learned that she had Stage 4 colon cancer and her prognosis was +/- 1 year to live. She didn’t buy that - at all. “It is not my time. I’m not done yet.” The voice had certainty.That year, President Trump was in office in the last year of his first term, and things were always topsy turvy. In 2024, when he had been elected to take office again, and things were changing rapidly as he put Project 2025 in place, Erin-Kate felt a fire light under her and this was going to be “it”. She needed to do something to bring down the noise, bring people together, close the divide (if possible) and demonstrate compassion for those who thought differently from her.The first version of this play was quite different: a half-written, half-improvised talkback format inspired by her work with Dame Edna, with whom she had gone on tour in 2008-2009. This version of a theatre piece would be led by her character Ulla, an alter-ego from Netherlands who was obsessed with American politics and wanted to know why we were all so cranky. That show was called “Purple Sage” - the purple being the blend of red and blue, and the sage being the wisdom that an outsider like curious Ulla could bring. That one went on the shelf - for now.Fast forward to spring of 2025 and Erin-Kate was well on her way to making FIVE DOORS: Drama, Doubt and Democracy. Hundreds of hours of research, interviews and character study led her to this version of the play. See blog posts for more about the journey. Some of EK’s close friends vote differently than she does, even though they have lived in the same communities for decades. She talked to them, while also actively NOT talking to them, when it was too hard or things were just too incendiary.It is her mission to encourage discourse, to understand one-another with a little more effort, and finding that we are more alike than we are different. That is what FIVE DOORS aims to do: to get you talking to those you avoid. To turn hate into compassion and curiosity. To start to depolarize the discourse. Come see the play and push yourself to be open to how others might have a pretty legitimate reason to believe and vote the way that they do.
A politically charged solo show in which one performer embodies five very different American women, revealing how class, faith, race, work and family quietly shape their votes far from the partisan extremes.
Playwright/Actor Bio
Erin-Kate has been acting professionally for 30 years and has won Bay Area Critics Circle, Dean Goodman Choice and other awards and nominations for acting and playwriting. As a playwright, she was commissioned by Theatre Rhinoceros to write and perform her play “Route 80: Cars, Cows and Caffeine”, which won critical acclaim for her as a writer and multi-character actor. She has performed with 42nd Street Moon, Berkeley Rep, TheatreWorks, Theatre Rhinoceros, Martuni's and other Bay Area theatres. Erin-Kate performed in the US/Canadian tour with Dame Edna in “Dame Edna: My First, Last Tour” as Dame Edna’s disappointing daughter Valmai, and in the star-studded San Francisco revival of “Ruthless: The Musical”. Erin-Kate has supplied her voice for hundreds of radio and industrial jobs, and has appeared in TV and film for the past 35 years. Erin-Kate is a proud member and former Board Member of Northern California’s SAG-AFTRA, where she continues to serve both as an advisor, and on various committees. She is also a member of AEA (Actors Equity Association) and AGVA (American Guild of Variety Artists). EK is a fourth generation San Franciscan, and had raised her sons, the fifth generation, in San Francisco with her wife, Michele.
Francine Torres is a recent transplant from New York, where she served as Head of Acting at New Studio on Broadway. She holds an M.F.A. in Acting from UC San Diego/La Jolla Playhouse Professional Training Program, and a B.A. in Theatre from San Francisco State University. Presently, she serves on faculty at Foothill College.Francine began her career under the tutelage of Luis Valdez, founder of the iconic El Teatro Campesino. Steeped in the Teatro lifestyle of performing and touring, she began work with El Teatro de la Esperanza, and played the protagonist, Ana, in the inaugural production of Real Women Have Curves. Since then, she has been committed to educating, performing, and directing theatre exploring the Chicanx experience. She has mentored and taught underrepresented students of color at historically classical theatres such as the American Conservatory Theatre, the American Repertory Theatre, and the La Jolla Playhouse. Francine directed at Stanford University’s Casa Zapata program, dedicated to the promotion of Latinx works. Her work also includes nearly twenty years at the American Conservatory Theatre, teaching acting, improvisation, and clown work and transitions seamlessly between street and classical theatre. She has directed over 50 plays with student actors, with genres ranging from The Neo Futurists to Moliere, mashing up classical theatre with contemporary context. As a professional actor, she has created many indelible characters during her time as company member at El Teatro Campesino and the American Repertory Theatre, has performed in repertory houses including Berkeley Rep, ACT, Dallas Theatre Center, La Jolla Playhouse, Theatresports, Killing My Lobster, and has toured the country and overseas.Francine’s most passionate interest is the intersection of diversity in theatre - gender, sexuality, color, neurodiversity and physical differences, and her experiences are published in the anthology Gravity Pulls You In. She has a substantial library of film and video produced by Killing My Lobster and El Teatro Campesino, and plays the titular role in BITTEN (Bad Dog Productions), currently winning independent film festival awards across the country.
Colin H. Johnson is an award-winning multi-hyphenate filmmaker, show-runner and educator who has been operating in the Bay Area since 2008. He is the founding Artistic Director of Awesome Theatre and Creative Director of Troubleshoot Productions, LLC. His projects have been showcased across several mediums, productions, publications and international festivals- including Z Space, SF Playground, BAMPFA, Theatre Rhinoceros, The Clown Conservatory, Another Hole in the Head, Unnamed Footage Festival, Comic-Con International Film Festival, Crypticon Seattle, Silicon Valley Asian Pacific FilmFest, Circus International Film Festival and Image Comics. He strives to create collaborative, innovative and inclusive environments within the arts space and takes the word “unproducable” as a personal challenge. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Film at California College of the Arts.
Thank You
Be brave, my friend, and talk about hard things with people who are different from you. Be open. Be honest. Be kind.
7/24/2026
I never thought I could EVER ask for money. For any reason. I never asked my parents for money growing up (or since), never asked for help in any way. When I heard other people were putting up shows, I never knew how they did it. When I found out that they had sponsors and/or asked for money, I thought "I could never do that." In fact, I have spent decades wanting to do my own show and thinking it was impossible because I had a mortgage to pay, kids to raise, responsibilities.My business of doing growth strategy consulting for emerging food brands was wonderful. Until it wasn't. It got me through treatment of Stage 4 colon cancer during COVID19 and I got some incredible success for my clients and good income for myself. But I was a terrible marketer of myself; I hated having to gin up new clients. Kind of the same as putting up a show: you strap on HUGE ego to get some attention. I just don't like that.I did some free readings of my nascent script last fall. I got great feedback, helpful and encouraging (some of you were there!!). I was asked to bring my show to Fringe of the Woods this summer. I had performed there in 2024, in our little 10 minute teaser of a show we called "An Evening with Ethel & Noel" - I was Merman and Kurt Reinhardt was Coward. It killed. We were invited back for the 2025 Fringe in a full mainstage slot. Our dear Kurt passed away unexpectedly in March 2025. All of us in the Kurtaverse were absolutely devastated. Instead of making an Ethel Merman show all on my own, which felt wrong, I agreed to be the festival's emcee in 2025. This year, I was asked to bring the play I've been working on since 2024: FIVE DOORS.Because I was no longer working in and on my business, I spent hundreds of hours of research, written 8 characters and settled on 5. I struggled with the fact that in this day and age, I can only play white women, because portraying a woman of color is no longer acceptable. No matter my compassion or [perceived] "understanding" of other cultures and colors, I'm not a woman of color. So I focused on finding and depicting the diversity within whiteness itself.There is no doubt that as a lesbian living in San Francisco, I am in an echo chamber. So finding information outside of my algorithm has been extremely challenging - but I worked hard at it! I interviewed multiple Republican and Democratic voters and listened to their stories. I wanted to understand the complexity of our lives and how we could all think so differently from one-another.Which brings us to where I am today: I hired my director, my dear friend from SFSU Francine Torres, who returned in the fall to her hometown of San Francisco after her gig as Head of Acting at NYU. She has been working with me on the script and character work for the past 3 weeks. I also hired Colin Johnson, an incredible media/film artist getting his MFA in Film from CCA. I was introduced to him by my talented actor and clown pal Sara Toby Moore, who has talked me through self-producing, along with a few other resources. Gregangelo Herrera invited me to do readings at his Gregangelo Museum. John Fisher invited me to do a full reading at Theatre Rhinoceros, which used to be a home base for me as an actor in the 90's. Rhino had hired me to write a one-woman show to open their 1997 season; I did that, making it a 2-woman show, hiring my SFSU buddy Elaine Tse after finishing her program at Yale Drama School, and my fabulous director and friend Amy Resnick.My wife Michele has literally for decades been saying "why aren't YOU in that?" when we would see theatre or commercials or films. She has always said "You just need to do your own stuff." I have started to audition again for many new projects and am getting better at auditions. Despite my decades of work as an actor, SO many casting directors have retired and there are many new CD's in their places, and none of them know me or my history here, because I had all but disappeared from SF stages as I was raising our 2 kids. As a few of you already know, I've done hundreds of voice-over jobs, independent and feature films and commercials. This project is a WHOLE NEW WORLD.My fundraising goal right now is $10K. I'll break that down for you in another update, but I wanted to let you have a little peek inside the journey that I'm on, and to thank you all for making it POSSIBLE.Please feel free to share this with anyone who wants to support this work getting off the ground - and thank you to those who have already shared it!DRESS REHEARSAL on 8/11 in SF:
We have 21 out of 70 seats left to see this reading at Eclectic Box Theatre. I am asking for a $15/seat donation for this, but if you can't, you can't. Just come. Let me know you're coming though, because I need to put everyone on a list, as I imagine there will be no way to get "walk-ups" inside.FULL PRODUCTION 8/14:
As mentioned above this first production will be at Fringe of the Woods in Frazier Park, CA. Get your tickets now if you would love to be outdoors with me seeing the show get on its feet for the first time.TEASER SHOWS 8/28 & 8/30:
I'm the opening act for Candace Johnson at The Marsh Berkeley. I have a 15 minute slot. I had my own offer to do my full play there in August, but will explain about that snafu another time.FULL PRODUCTION 11/10:
The Marsh Berkeley is hosting me to do a full production on their mainstage and I was offered either the San Francisco stage of Berkeley. Because of the layout, I chose the Berkeley stage. I will send out more for that, as we get closer.I am looking for spaces to book for October - ANYWHERE. I have reached out to probably a dozen or more theatres in California. No success. I'll give updates on that process in another email, as well.THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to all of you. Even if you haven't donated, you are ALL making me feel supported because you have all OPTED to join this mailing list. That is very encouraging to me, beyond belief.
7/21/2026
I am holding an open "invited dress" rehearsal to catch a glimpse of the first full production rehearsal of FIVE DOORS: Drama, Doubt and Democracy on Tuesday, Aug 11. This is in preparation for my first full performance at Fringe of the Woods in Frazier Park, CA on Friday, Aug 14. YOU MUST LET ME KNOW YOU ARE COMING. I have a list and if you haven't told me via email or text that you'd like to be there, you aren't on it. Hit the CONTACT button here, or email or text me directly.LOCATION:
Eclectic Box Theatre
446 Valencia Street, San FranciscoTIME:
6:45 House Opens
7:00 Start timeRUNNING TIME:
About 1 hour, if things go as planned! But we may need to stop and fix things along the way. This is where you're in for the 'behind the scenes' look at live theatre!TALK-BACK:
We are considering a talk-back session after the runthrough, so you can provide some feedback on the experience of the show. Keep in mind that we perform on Friday that same week, so big changes are not possible. Just maybe some feedback on tech, pacing suggestions, etc - or how much you LOVED it? This is TBD.TICKETS:
Please use Go Fund Me* with a suggested donation amount of $15 for each seat you would like to reserve. The suggested $15 donation for this particular event is to help me pay for the space for 5 hours, house manager, insurance and the tech board use. If you are someone who can pay a little more, that will help cover the cost of people who would like to attend but for whom things are a little tight right now.NOTES: There are only 70 seats in this theatre, so please only reserve seats for people who you are 100% certain will show up. Also, this suggested donation is NOT required, if you cannot afford it. AND THAT IS OKAY! This list is in order of first come, first served.I am so nervous/excited and need to get back to memorizing!!Thank you all so much for your support, Erin-Kate