Katie Bender (she/her/hers) is a playwright, performer and theater maker.  Her plays include Judith, SHE WOLF, The Survivors/Los Sobrevivientes, Instructions for a Séance and Howling, Texas to name a few. Filled with games, physical exertion and a poetic delight in the mundane, her work often examines the surprising ways humans transform within impossible systems. 

Katie’s work has been developed and produced all over the country including at Hyde Park Theater, ZACH, The Alley, Shrewds, EST, Kitchen Dog, The Playwrights’ Center, LAUNCH PAD and Fusebox Festival, THT Rep, New Harmony Project, ACT Theatre and All For One Theater. She is the co-creator of Underbelly, with whom she made ecstatic site-specific performances such as Slip River which received the Critics Table Award for Best New Comedy. Her play Judith received the B.Iden Payne award for Best New Script. Katie was a Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center and is currently a Core Writer. She received her M.F.A from The University of Texas. 

Photo credit: (top) Katie Bender as Dinah in Lisa D’Amour’s The Cataract. (In Development) Mercedes O’Bannion’s costume renderings for The Survivors/Los Sobrevivientes.  (Plays) Raquel Cain, Allison Stoos and Estrella Saldaña in The Fault.  (In Collaboration) Katie Bender, Gabrielle Reisman and Rachel Mars, photo by Bruce Silcox.   Headshot by Kelsey Oliver.