Kate Eastwood Norris
What the critics are saying, (lord help me)
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For her work on 2009 JAW WEST Playwright's Festival of new works

One of the joys of JAW is getting to watch the actors (most of whom are two plays during the festival) inhabit such different roles on the same weekend, or even on the same day. For example, Kate Eastwood Norris played a proper (if unusually inquisitive) Victorian English woman in Naomi Iizuka's "Concerning Strange Devices From the Distant West." On the next day, she was hilarious as a flirty, trashy hair-flipping single mom in Stephanie Timm's "On the Nature of Dust," and at least a couple of regular audience members didn't recognize her as the same actress. -by Marty Hughley, The Oregonian

For Stella Strong in the world premiere of Sheila Callaghan's Fever/Dream at Woolly Mammoth Theatre directed by Howard Shalwitz -May/June 2009

Jumping out of the ensemble for her born-to-play-it comfort level is statuesque Kate Eastwood Norris, who delivers the utterly likable and utterly castrating Stella Strong with pinpoint accuracy. Her sense of comedy is as flawless as it is understated. -by KateWingfield – Metro Weekly

Director Howard Shalwitz amps up a superlative cast to a feverish pitch. Once you get warmed up, you’re either chuckling or falling off your seat laughing with the supercharged, high-octane energy, melodramatic, deadpan farce this tightly-wired ensemble delivers.The play is full of exquisitely staged moments. When Basil’s underling Aston Marton (a wonderfully corporate-cool Kenyatta Rogers) woos Stella (the incomparable Kate Eastwood Norris), he text messages a parody of Calderon’s baroque poetry, which we read via a flashing digital banner:  “Yr glimmering eyes shame the stars.”  “When will U open your petals to me again?”--by  Rosalind Lacy – DC TheatreScene

For Sophie in Fin Kennedy's US premiere of How To Disappear Completely and Never Be Found at Portland Center Stage - Feb/Mar 2009

Kate Eastwood Norris brings a calm, sweet presence in the strange role of a forensic pathologist who might be a figment of Charlie's fevered imagination or the scientific sleuth piecing together Charlie's life story through his autopsy.  Marty Hughley- The Oregonian

For Eleanor and Esme in Tom Stoppard's Rock & Roll directed by Blanka Zizka at The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia - Sept/Oct  2008

…We also meet Max (David Chandler), a passionate communist forever defending his ideals, wife Eleanor (the truly amazing Kate Eastwood Norris) Eleanor's struggle with breast cancer in Norris' powerfully painful portrayal…Stoppard mixes all this and more, breaking through the details of two decades to connect people and ideas in a poetic finale reminiscent of his heady-yet-heartfelt Arcadia, but with rock 'n' roll flair. Governments and philosophies come and go, but nothing crushes the human spirit. Rock on, people. - by Mark Cofta - Philadelphia City Paper

Kate Eastwood Norris gives every dimension to Eleanor and later, doubling as the daughter Esme, she plays subtlety in a very different key. Together it is one of the best performances of the year.- by The Edge's –Lewis Whittington

Kate Eastwood Norris in a tremendous performance wages a battle with cancer.-by Philadelphia Weekly's J. Cooper Robb

Meanwhile, back in England, Max's wife, Eleanor, Kate Eastwood Norris, a classics professor, is dying of cancer…by Act 2, Esme (Norris) has a teenage daughter of her own ...(a) terrific performance...-by Toby Zinman - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Kate Eastwood Norris gives a tour de force performance as both the rigid, dying Eleanor and the sympathetic, but lost daughter, Esme. When Eleanor rends her garments to reveal her cancer ridden body it brought me to tears. This is in spite of the fact that the bald cap she was wearing was too large, having to encapsulate all of her lovely hair for when she plays the daughter. But it didn't matter. She got Eleanor and she got me.-by Claudia Perry – Aisle Say, PA

The production has a swift pacing, spare attractive turntable stage, little sentiment. As frequent with its creator, Stoppard's women carry the play's heart. 

Max's materialism is challenged by his cancer-ridden wife in the most powerful scene. She is the very gifted Kate Eastwood Norris, who later doubles as her own daughter.-by WRTI's  Lesley Valdez

Zizka capitalized on the play’s humor and intergenerational family relationships to integrate the big ideas into the lives of the characters and find an emotional depth that the Broadway production lacked. (Marx, for all his talk about “praxis,” would have been proud). The intimacy of the Wilma’s smaller stage helped, and Norris’s heart-wrenching performance as Eleanor showed that human passions, like Eros, “don’t fit nicely into a system.” Between Norris and Zizka, they even managed to make Stoppard’s otherwise obtuse discussions of cognitive science seem plausible. -by Jim Rutter – Broad Street Review

The Philadelphia theater season has begun with a remarkable set of shows, all of which I've seen merit praise and audience attendance. One of these show, Tom Stoppard's "Rock 'N' Roll," currently at the Wilma Theatre, features a character, played with honesty and intensity by Kate Eastwood Norris, who has breast cancer and talks about her disease, and her place as an individual person who wants and needs personal attention and affection in the midst of controversies about politics and the translation of poetry. Norris is splendid in expressing, intellectually and emotionally, the basic truth, that people come first and should be valued for who they are and what they've accomplished while they have the time who earn and appreciate the attention. Norris' moving performing puts breast cancer, the fighting of a disease, and the unfortunate moment when one knows it might or will be terminal, into striking human perspective.- by Neal Zoren – Delaware County Times

For Lady Teazle in The School For Scandal directed by Richard Clifford at the Folger Theatre – May/June 2008

As the singularly self-absorbed Lady Teazle, Norris gets some of the best lines, and delivers them with accustomed aplomb.---Peter Marks – Washington Post

Norris, who recently received her second Helen Hayes Award in two years, succeeds in making her character's witty remarks and occasional physical gags seem effortless.---Susan Berlin – Talkin’ Broadway.com

For Lady Macbeth in Macbeth directed by Aaron Posner and Teller at Two River Theatre, NJ and Folger Theatre, DC – Jan-April 2008

Ms. Norris, a Washington-based regional-theater actress whose work I mean to follow from now on, plays Lady Macbeth not
as a harpy à la Bette Davis but as a wholly believable woman lured astray by the siren song of ambition.---Terry Teachout – The Wall Street Journal

Norris is a convincing study of rapaciousness and guilt whose frail moments are also staged with sensitivity. ---Paul Harris- Variety

These Macbeths are quite a couple, and Ian Merrill Peakes and Kate Eastwood Norris do justice to the unjust two-some. Their love scenes are erotic, and their fights are physical. Neither he nor she is above slamming the other against a door when anger invades the soul...Given that Lady Macbeth is the smarter of the two, Norris matter-of-factly delivers the specifics of her murderous plan while Peakes squints in confusion. Norris excels as the woman behind the man who's always one step ahead of him. After the first murder, he's appalled by the blood, while she's intoxicated by it. Norris is hardly the battle-axe that many a Lady Macbeth has routinely been in other productions. She's a cool, sleek honey blonde. That she seems so elegant makes matters worse, because she appears to be a noble woman who should know better.---Peter Filichia – NJ Star Ledger

For Beatrice in Much  Ado About Nothing  directed by Kim Rubenstein at Shakespeare Santa Cruz – summer  - 2007

…one of the flirtiest Beatrice and Benedicks ever to coo and spar… Kate Eastwood Norris turns Beatrice into a proto-Carrie Bradshaw, a woman too smart and sexy to need a man to complete her (she's gutsy enough to sit at a table by herself at the masked ball), but unable to fight her yearning for Benedick---Karen D’Souza  -  San Jose Mercury News

Kate Eastwood Norris as Beatrice and Ian Merrill Peakes as Benedick open new windows to the inner life of their characters. These athletic actors risk not allowing the brilliance of their barbed repartee to govern their choices. As a result Benedick and Beatrice come alive as fully human. We envy their devastating facility at verbal jousting, but we also seee how their mocking masks their vulnerabilities and costs them the very thing thay both so much desire.--- Mark Bradlyn - Santa Cruz Sentinel

For  Widow Quin in Playboy of the Western World directed by Bob Moss at Shakespeare Santa Cruz – summer - 2007

…the finely nuanced performance of Kate Eastwood Norris in the complex and difficult role of the Widow Quin …superb --- Philip Slater - Santa Cruz Sentinel

For Kay Fein and Jayne Summerhouse in She Stoops To Comedy by David Greenspan at Woolly Mammoth in March and April 2007 – directed by Howard Shalwitz earning Kate her second Helen Hayes Award

Around a king-sized bed onstage…Norris flings accusations and wounded looks. At, er, Norris. Back and forth she goes, flipping from actress Jayne to designer Kay and well nigh nailing the illusion of a verbal brawl between two worthy opponents….splendid... --- Peter Marks – The Washington Post

This is the funniest performance from Kate Eastwood Norris since, well – since the last time she was on a stage. This woman makes unfunny funny, but that isn’t a skill she needs here. Here, she has material worthy of her talents and she makes the most of it. Reviewers often refer to musical theatre performers who can “stop the show” with a fabulous song…but when is the last time you’ve seen someone stop a show without a song? Norris accomplishes this with a crystal clear comic dialogue with herself that has her twisting and turning at top speed, creating both sides of a conversation with such clarity that no one in the audience doubted which character said what, while, at the same time, providing “herself” with both the set ups and the punch lines for a series of gags that builds to a wonderful theatrical climax. --- Brad Hathaway – Potomac Stages

For Kari in The Pavilion, by Craig Wright at Two River Theatre in NJ, directed by Aaron Posner – winter’ 06

Kari is tenderly played by Kate Eastwood Norris as a woman determined to cope. With her face frozen in a wan smile of regret, she clutches her sweater closed as though trying to hide her broken heart. Still working at the bank, down in the basement among the safe-deposit boxes, and still married to Hans, the local golf pro who rescued her in her time of need, she hates golf almost as much as she despises the memory of Peter and their unborn child.--- Naomi Siegel  -  NY Times

Kari, whose marriage to the local golf pro prompts a highly humorous and supremely sad anecdote, does an abrupt one-eighty, and Ms. Norris handles it smoothly. You believe it. In fact, you believe everything about this strong, gentle, intelligent survivor – and that’s really good acting. …and oh, yes, enriched by Kate Eastwood Norris’s definitive Kari, (Aaron Posner’s) Two River directorial debut is a success.---Philip Dorian - The Two River Times

---For Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Folger Theatre, Washington DC -Oct/Nov ‘06 directed by Joe Banno, earning Kate a Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress

John Huston once suggested that 99% of directing is casting.if so, Mr. Banno may have achieved 99% of his 99% with his inspired choice of the fabulous Kate Eastwod Norris as Puck. Puck is manic, but Norris paints the whole auditorium with joy; Puck is mischievious, but Norris makes us all co-conspirators in a never-ending adventure of love. Norris is, indeed, so versatile that had Banno chosen to lodge Dream  in a shop selling kitchen appliances instead of in the 1930’s, Norris would have rendered Puck convincingly as a toaster oven, and afterward served us all grilled cheese sandwiches. ---Tim Treanor – DC Theatre Review

---For Rosalind in As You Like It and Goneril in King Lear  at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA – summer of 2006 directed by Aaron Posner and Skip Greer, respectively

Norris is a delightful Rosalind, drawing us in to share her fear of the unknown…the forbidden fruit titillation at the idea of Rosalind disguising herself as a man (she’s a lovely, lanky, tentative youth) nicely prepares the way for the sexual-tension comedy of her mock-wooing scenes with the unsuspecting Orlando…a radiant cowgirl…---Robert Hurwitt – San Francisco Chronical

Kate Eastwood Norris shines as the ruthless Goneril, the most monstrous of Lear’s daughters, always scheming, always ready to strike.--- Karen D’Souza – San Jose Mercury News