Ensemble Bios

Kate Hennig

In her second season at the Shaw Festival, Kate Hennig will appear in Ragtime and A Man and Some Women. Previous Shaw credits include Something on the Side and Gypsy.

Kate recently played the dance teacher, Mrs Wilkinson, in Billy Elliot: The Musical on Broadway and then in Toronto, garnering a Dora Award and a Toronto Theatre Critics Award. She has received a previous Dora Award for her role as Dolce Dolta in Ratbag at Canadian Stage; and Betty Mitchell Awards for each of the following roles – Sally Bowles in Cabaret at Theatre Calgary, Maureen in Beauty Queen of Leenane and Ruth in Cosi at Alberta Theatre Projects. She has also received a Genie nomination for her role as the Berlin chambermaid in Thirty-two Short Films about Glenn Gould. Other award nominations include a Dora nomination for her role as Agnete Ottosen in The Danish Play at Nightwood Theatre; and Betty Mitchell nominations for her role as Leni Riefenstahl in The Blue Light at Alberta Theatre Projects, and for Berlin to Broadway at Theatre Calgary.

In her thirty-year career, Kate has played Shakespeare, Shaw, Moliere, Racine, Coward, Dekker, Feydeau, Wilde, Mamet, and Stoppard, as well as many Canadian plays and musicals, including the world premiere of Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (Royal Shakespeare Company/National Arts Centre). She also loved playing Martha in White Christmas (directed by Tony Award-winner, Walter Bobbie), both in Toronto at the Sony Centre and in St Paul, Minnesota at the Ordway.

Kate can currently be seen as Adele Witham in Global Television’s Bomb Girls. Other film and television credits include Flashpoint, The Eleventh Hour, Celine, Michael Winterbottom’s The Claim, Mrs Winterbourne, Kevin Bacon’s Losing Chase, and Lives of Girls and Women.

Kate is a burgeoning playwright with three completed full-length plays – The Eleventh David (based on the Japanese legends and poetry of Ono No Komachi), Waterworks (a family drama set in St Catharines in 1918), and Queenmaker (a historical drama about the influence that Katharine Parr had on the future Queens, Mary and Elizabeth).

Kate has an MA in voice studies (with distinction) from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, England; and, has taught voice and acting at the National Theatre School English Section, McGill University, and the University of Toronto.