Writer & Performer

Kathryn Grody corrected the cosmic error of her Los Angeles birth by finding a home at New York’s Public Theater almost 50 years ago, where Joe Papp and Gail Merrifield Papp became mentors for life. Her distinguished theater career includes her Obie Award-winning The Marriage of Bette and Boo and Top Girls, and the Drama Desk Award-nominated A Mom’s Life, all at the Public: The Model Apartment (59 e 59 theater) and 20^th Century Blues (Signature Theater) Her film credits include The Lemon Sisters, with Diane Keaton and Carol Kane, and The Sunset Gang, with Uta Hagen, and the Execution of Private Slovik, with Martin Sheen on television along with various after school specials. Kathryn and her husband became unlikely social media familiars during the COVID-19 pandemic (2.3 million followers and counting.) She had the honor of recording Gail Merrifield Papp’s memoir, Private/Public: My Life with Joe Papp At The Public Theater for Audible in 2023, and had the world premiere of THE UNEXPECTED 3^RD-A Radical, Rollicking Rumination on the Optimism of Staying Alive, this past fall at People’s Light Theater in Malvern, Pennsylvania, directed by her collaborator for 50 years, Timothy Near, and recently filmed the shorts Wolly Bolly and Double Happiness.  The latest adventure is a podcast for Lemonada, that she records with her youngest son, Gideon, and her husband of 47 years, called Don’t Listen To Us…She is a Usual Suspect with the New York Theatre Workshop, where she will be sharing this solo work in the spring, at their Brick Festival. She is on the boards of Dances For a Variable Population, and Downtown Women For Change, and is a proud ambassador with the International Rescue Committee.