About

Kate Ellis is an Acting Coach, Writer, and a Drama Education Innovator. She also facilitates conversations for the City of (her beloved) Melbourne/ Naarm.

Guiding her work is the principle that great pleasure can be extracted from detail. That sensory rapture can be cultivated in the everyday. That deeper levels of intimacy with self, other and environment can be achieved through the art of listening and play.

She also works with people in corporate sectors and academia who are wanting to express themselves more fully. Kate believes in this regard that emotions are a treasure trove of information as much as a wonderful tool for communication.

Acting Coach

Kate currently facilitates professional coaching for young people at 16th Street Actors Studio as well as classes for TAFTA’s full, part time and ‘teen’ students. Her private coaching business sees her working with incredible talent from musicals such as Wicked, Rent, Hamilton and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, with Bell Shakespeare, actors such as Lucy Fry (Godfather of Harlem), Jessica Green (Air, The Librarians) as well as a host of gloriously brave and passionate actors working towards a career in what they love.

She is also working with esteemed and glorious Acting Coach Miranda Harcourt and Producer/Director/ human, Anupam Sharma of Temple Films, Fox Studios. Here she coaches and consults with new talent for Anu’s upcoming films.

Kate worked on British children’s television series Secret Life of Boys (2020), has run specialised workshops for Neighbours cast members and NIDA students, was the Drama Coach for popular children’s television show The Saddle Club (series three) and for Jonathan M. Shiff Productions Lightning Point, Reef Drs and Mako; Island of Secrets (filming at Village Roadshow studios on the Gold Coast) and facilitated a drama program for refugee children at Villawood Refugee Detention Centre,

In 2016 she was the Drama Coach to Alice Foulcher during the production and filming of Australian Film, That’s Not Me which had its world premier at 2017’s Santa Barbara International Film Festival and it’s Australian premiere at the Sydney Film Festival.

Kate has developed and facilitated listening tours based on her work as an acting coach, for the Abbotsford Convent’s festival ‘Open Spaces’. This tour saw participants ‘cultivating sensory rapture in the everyday’ in familiar spaces.

She has worked with artists such as Emma Dean as well as Lisa Roet and Jane Karnowski with thanks to a Creative Victoria Arts Grant. Here Kate helped students physicalise their growing understanding of the nature of simians through their work with world renowned sculptor Lisa Roet.

An Innovative Educator

In 2023, Kate has been invited to write EduPacks for Victorian Opera productions such as Idomeneo and Galileo alongside the wonderful Tim Ryan and Claire Wearne.

In 2022, Kate was invited to be on the board of the Australian Children’s Theatre Foundation , to present her workshop ‘Vitalising intimacy, pleasure and sensitivity though Drama’ at the World Drama Education (IDEA) Congress in Iceland, to run two workshops at New Zealand’s Drama Conference and one at Drama Victoria’s 2022 Conference. She has since been invited to work with National Drama in London and PACT Theatre in Amsterdam.

In 2021, Kate was employed as a specialist teacher by the peak body for drama education, Drama Victoria. Through the ‘Blended Arts Program’, Kate presents, is a writer of scripts and education material and works with rural schools as a mentor (for Teachers and Students) to introduce and implement Drama Education. For the ‘Positive Start Initiative’ (DET), Kate tours Victoria with a joyous and healing Drama program.

Kate is employed by Melbourne University as a Clinical Teaching Specialist for the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Here she supports Teacher Candidates through the leading of Seminars and observations while students are on their teaching rounds.

In 2018 Kate worked as an educationalist for the young cast of Mia Wasikowska's new film Judy and Punch, and her work as an innovative teacher of Language and Literature and Drama was recognised by Victoria’s Independent School’s body. ISV filmed her teaching practice as part of a project that aimed to start conversations with and between teachers regarding their current innovative practices in curriculum and pedagogy. ISV also employed Kate to develop & run workshops for 2019’s Arts Learning Festival as well as seminar programs for Victorian teachers. Kate has a Bachelor of Arts (Media and Communications) majoring in Film and Sociology (UNSW), studied at Theatre Nepean and has a Masters in Education (Melbourne University).

Passionate Author, Poet and facilitator of conversation.

In her 34th year, after being published in 2010’s The Modern Woman’s Anthology and winning various competitions for her poetry, Kate began putting passionate energy and focus into her career as a writer.

In 2017 she was named a finalist in the Iceland Writers Retreat writing competition and completed her first poetry manuscript. She has been a Feature Writer for Dinner Party Press (2022), and has a chapter for Gather, a Women’s Space second book, ‘The Motherhood Space’ (Hardie Grant, 2023). This chapter was written at the request of Gabrielle Nancarrow who assisted Kate on her journey through the IVF system as a single, 39 year old woman in 2019*.

She has been a Feature Poet for Melbourne’s Girls on Key and has been published multiple times in the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English’s Idiom (for instance article ‘Sex and Gender in the English Classroom - it’s natural’) and for Drama Australia’s ADEM Magazine. In 2019 her piece ‘Intimacy in the Age of noise’ was published in online journal HER HQ and a poem of hers was selected for a piece in London zine Kollide which can be found in London’s Poetry Library.

At the end of the 2019, Kate spoke to her paper ‘Ethical Hedonism: Vitalising pleasure in writing processes’ at Monash Universities International English Symposium; and at the beginning of 2020 her panel discussion ‘Transitioning for Survival’ featured during MPavillion’s 2019/2020 program.

In 2021 and 2022, she has created and facilitated further discussions for MPavilion, ‘Iso Intimates’ and ‘RIGHTS of Passage’; for ABC Radio Melbourne (‘Friendship in the age of isolation’ with Jacinta Parsons); and for the State Drama Conference.

*As a 42 year old without children, Kate is a passionate advocate for diverse perspectives around motherhood, and legitimizing lives (and choices) in a world that still sees motherhood as the ultimate purpose for the female sex. She often uses the language of motherhood when talking to her creative projects… they are her babies; and her co-creators are the community of people who help birth her ideas or become, the ‘village’.

Personal Development

In 2023, Kate is learning from the phenomenal Miranda Harcourt, acting coach for Peter Jackson, Take Waititi, and Jane Campion films, for Nicole Kidman and other such notable creatives. This is an incredible journey and thanks Miranda for her generosity and support.

In 2022, Kate learnt from Drama Specialists all over the world at the World Drama Congress (IDEA) in Iceland.

Kate travelled to Scotland in 2018 for a writers retreat with Patchwork Farm. Here, writers Patricia Lee Lewis, singer Jane Mortifee and New York Times bestseller Jacqueline Sheehan, invited her to use her unique perspective to lead workshops. Sheehan was particularly interested in writers having the opportunity to bring their writing into their body. As an educator and artist whose work and training has centered around body language, Kate developed workshops that allowed writers to get into their character, or discover new characters for new works.

Performer

Kate has performed and trained with Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre in Brisbane, performed at the Queensland Theatre and NIDA, has trained with female macho dancer Eisa Jocson and undertaken PULSE Masterclasses with Director Tanya Gerstle. She has trained with renowned Butoh artists Sankai Juku and trained and performed in Italy with Butoh master Atsushi Takenouchi. She has also appeared in various television shows such as The Saddle Club (series two and three), Winners and Losers, Wentworth and for television commercials.