Kelly Burr (Academically published as Kelly Nelsen-Pedersen)
Kelly holds a master’s degree from The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-Upon Avon, U.K.
where her concentration was on gender roles in Shakespeare’s work. Her dissertation on secondary female characters in Shakespeare’s plays is available on the shelf of The Shakespeare Institute’s library. (Or on Academia.edu, if you prefer not to travel.)
While earning her degree, she studied with some of the top Shakespeare academics in the world and she was advised by Michael Dobson, the current head of The Shakespeare Institute, and Tiffany Stern, a noted Shakespeare scholar.
Kelly has also attended master classes with The Royal Shakespeare Company and workshops with Gregory Doran, former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and RSC founding member and Shakespearean text expert, John Barton. (Director of the “Playing Shakespeare” series with Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, and more.)
One of her favorite areas of Shakespeare is the American relationship with performance, receptivity, and analysis of the work. She has spent considerable time studying the techniques of half-American, half-British Broadway Shakespeare director Margaret Webster. Ms. Webster had a unique approach and perspective on the cultural differences between American and British Shakespeare which Kelly continues to study today.
Kelly’s first Shakespeare play was The Tempest at the age of 12. She played Ariel on rollerblades. At 17, she founded The Junior Shakespeareans, a company of local kids whose parents wanted them to learn Shakespeare. While in college, she developed the “Shakespeare for the Completely Uninterested” program that traveled around Connecticut to take on the challenge of teaching anyone who claimed to hate Shakespeare. She has since accumulated over twenty years of directing Shakespeare plays.
As she originated her relationship with Shakespeare as an actor, she continues to work with it from a performance-based approach. “Shakespeare was meant to be performed, not read.”
