Kaitlin Hopkins named Head of Musical Theatre

Posted by Jayme Blaschke
University News Service
April 15, 2009

Kaitlin Hopkins, currently on tour with the national tour of Dirty Dancing, has been named Head of Musical Theatre at Texas State University-San Marcos.
 Hopkins’ husband, Jim Price, will also be joining her on the faculty.
“We are thrilled and excited that Kaitlin and Jim will be joining us at Texas State,” said John Fleming, chair of the department of theatre and dance. “Via our New York showcase and through our participation in the American College Theatre Festival (including this year’s National Student Playwriting Award winner), we have been striving for increased national recognition.
 
“We believe that in joining an already first-rate faculty, Kaitlin and Jim will not only lead our musical theatre program to national prominence, but help elevate the department as a whole to a place on the national stage,” he said.
 
Hopkins’ acting career spans more than two decades and includes credits in films such as Confessions of a Shopaholic, The Nanny Diaries, How to Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog and Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles. Ontelevision she has appeared on Law and Order, Spin City, Star Trek: Voyager, The Practice, JAG, Rescue Me and many others. She spent three years as Dr. Kelsey Harrison on the long running soap Another World.
 
Hopkins is also an accomplished theater actress both on Broadway in Noises Off, Anything Goes, How the Grinch Stole Christmas) and Off-Broadway in Bat Boy-The Musical (drama desk nomination), Nicky Silver’s Beautiful Child, bare: a pop opera and The Great American Trailer Park Musical. She has numerous regional theater credits in addition to spending a year on the road with the international tour of the John Adam opera I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, and more recently touring with Disney’s On The Record.
 
“My husband and I started teaching together at the college level a few years ago,” Hopkins said. “Around the same time, we got involved with the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival judging the Irene Ryan awards and teaching master classes in different regions around the country. I have also been involved with the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts as a panel member, working with our most talented high school students from across the country.
 
“Texas State University wants to build a nationally recognized musical theater program, and that’s what we intend to help them do,” she said. “I have always had a passion for teaching and working with young artists, so having the opportunity to shape a program like this is honestly a dream come true.”
 
Her husband, actor/playwright Jim Price is no stranger to the stage, either. He has performed on Broadway (The Civil War, Ring of Fire), Off-Broadway (Bat Boy-The Musical, bare:a pop opera), national and international tours of Les Miserables, as well as performing in regional and stock productions around the country. As a playwright, his works have been seen at The Lark Theater in New York, the Shotgun Players in San Francisco, Stanford University and the Actor’s Studio (playwright/directors workshop).
 
In 2007 he was selected to be a Lark Playwrights Workshop Fellow and joined the year long workshop run by celebrated playwright Arthur Kopit. His play Collision Course was a semi-finalist for the O’Neill Playwright’s Conference in 2008, and his musical Cold Feet (composer/lyricist)was a finalist for the O’Neill Musical Theater Conference, also in 2008. Cold Feet is now licensed by Miracle or Two Productions in New York City. His play Colony Collapse is a current semi-finalist for the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference in Idaho this summer.
 
“We went down to Texas State not knowing what to expect, but after spending a couple of days with the students and faculty, as well as meeting with the dean and the provost’s office and seeing the support they were willing to give us in building the program, we knew this was the opportunity we had been looking for,” said Price. “We’re very excited, and I think they are, too.”
 
For information about the Texas State University Musical Theatre Program, go to: www.theatreanddance.txstate.edu.