Karen MacDonald

Karen MacDonald is a Boston based actor, director and teacher. She has previously appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as Titania in a concert version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream,at Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood. She premiered A Soldier’s Carol with the Boston Pops during the Holiday Pops season.

Recent local work includes Misery, Christmas Carol, At Wit’s End at Merrimack Repertory Theatre; Pru Payne, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, The Children at Speakeasy Stage; Rooted,The Cake at Lyric Stage; Nassim, Common Ground Revisited at The Huntington Theater.

On Broadway, she understudied and performed the role of Amanda Wingfield in John Tiffany’s revival of The Glass Menagerie.

Other local and regional credits include Greater Boston Stage Company,Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Gloucester Stage Co., Boston Theater Company, Boston Playwrights Theatre, NewRepertory Theatre, Arts Emerson, Israeli Stage, Sleeping Weazel, Martha’sVineyard Playhouse, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Shakespeare and Company, Great Barrington Public Theater, Hartford Stage, LongWharf Theatre, Trinity Rep, Gamm Theatre and Portland Stage.

A Founding Company Member of the American Repertory Theatre, she appeared in 73 productions, including Endgame, The. Sea Gull, Mother Courage and her Children,Highway Ulysses, NoExit, Olly’s Prison,Winter’s Tale, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, Dido Queen of Carthage, The Imaginary Invalid, Sganarelle, Phaedra, Oliver Twist,Richard II, As You Like It.

Nationally, she has worked extensively from Philadelphia’s Wilma Theatre, to Florida’s Maltz Jupiter Theater, Cincinnati Shakespeare Theatre, The Alley Theatre in Houston and Berkeley Rep in California, among others.

Internationally, she has appeared at festivals in Canada, Asti, Avignon, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Israel and the former Yugoslavia and performed at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London.

Her directing credits include Old Money(Commonwealth Shakespeare Company) Gidion’s Knot (Bridge Rep); An Ideal Husband, Woman in Black(Gloucester Stage) and Dressed Up! Wigged Out!, (Boston Playwrights Theatre).

She is the recipient of several Elliot Norton and IRNE Awards for her performances. Ms. MacDonald has received both the Robert Brustein Award for Sustained Achievement in the Theatre and the Eliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence. She was a recipient of a TCG/ Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship in partnership with Merrimack Repertory Theatre. She has taught extensively and was the Monin Fellow at Boston College 2010-11, and a Lecturer in Theatre, Dance and Media at Harvard University, where she taught Acting to Undergraduate and Extension School students for 22 years.