​

kb saine is a director, author, educator, and theatre historian with over two decades of experience. 

 

In the professional theatre world, kb served for six years as the producing artistic director of Sycamore Rouge in Petersburg, VA. She has also worked with Greenbrier Valley Theatre, Vintage Theatre Company, and Buckhannon Community Theatre in West Virginia; with the Richmond Triangle Players, Theatre IV/Theatre Gym, the Barksdale Theatre, Firehouse Theatre Project, TheatreVirginia, Dogwood Dell, Yellow House Productions, theatremachine and SPARC in Virginia; and the Dallas Theatre Center in Texas. Favorite past productions under her direction include The Glass Menagerie, Orlando, Everybody, Topdog/Underdog, The Altruists, Stop kiss, The Odyssey, Fair and Tender Ladies, The Crucible, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Tartuffe, Measure for Measure, Santaland Diaries and Season’s Greetings, Steal Away, and Stories I Ain’t Told Nobody Yet, among many others. 

 

Academically, saine has taught at Wesleyan College in Macon, GA; Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA; West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon, WV; and Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, WV. saine is the current program coordinator of the contemporary theatre studies program at Shepherd University. 

 

her accomplishments as a playwright include adaptations of the velveteen rabbit, (a play with music with original compositions by Roddy Barnes) and rumpelstiltskin. Original works include appalachian blackface, a minstrel show/coal camp mashup tale in Southern WV, and  read·y for right, about the first civil rights protest in the city of Petersburg, VA. her recently produced short works include seeds and c.o.r.i. meeting, 2nd floor. 

 

saine's academic research includes issues of race and the representation of marginalized groups, with a particular focus on black theatre history and August Wilson’s work as part of an Affrilachian canon. she is currently the performance review editor for the Black Theatre Review.

 

saine’s professional service includes workshops, panels, and publications with South Eastern Theatre Conference and Theatre Symposium, West Virginia Thespians, West Virginia Theatre Association,  ART26201, Virginia Theatre Association, Southside Virginia Council for the arts, Virginians for the Arts, and extensive work with the Black Theatre Network (the national organization of black theatre professionals, academics and practitioners), where she is proud to  serve as a past president for the national executive board. saine is also the host of the black theatre history podcast, which can be found on apple podcasts & at www.blacktheatrehistory.com.

 

Saine’s most recent directing projects include the devised work The Safety Zone, and Our Town, both with Shepherd University students. She will direct Into the Woods for Theatre West Virginia this summer.

 

 

 

kb saine (she/her)
director: www.kbsaine.com

producer/host, black theatre history podcast: www.blacktheatrehistory.com

past president, Black Theatre Network: www.blacktheatrenetwork.org

performance editor, the Black Theatre Review: https://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/tbtr

Theater, as a powerful conveyer of human values, has often led us through the impossible landscape of American class, regional and racial conflicts, providing fresh insights and fragile but enduring bridges of fruitful dialogue.  It has provided us with a mirror that forces us to face personal truths and enables us to discover within ourselves an indomitable spirit that recognizes, sometimes across wide social barriers, those common concerns that make possible genuine cultural fusion.
—August Wilson, April 2000