Kamarie Chapman (she/her+)
Storyteller/Dramaturg/Producer

Thoughts on Creation and Current Work:

Stories belong to everyone. Human beings need stories — to tell them, share them, question them, and see themselves reflected inside them. The work I am most drawn to celebrates the breadth and complexity of human experience, especially voices and bodies that have too often been excluded from the stage or pushed to its margins.

As a writer and educator, I am interested in storytelling that is honest, imperfect, deeply human, and rooted in connection. I want to create work that invites people into conversation rather than asking them to observe from a distance. I care deeply about accessibility in both storytelling and performance because I believe theatre does not only exist on a stage. It exists wherever people gather to witness, listen, and imagine together.

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My teaching and pedagogy are grounded in inclusive, student-centered practices that encourage curiosity, collaboration, and critical engagement. Over time, I have found myself increasingly interested in creating spaces where emerging artists feel empowered to bring forward perspectives, experiences, and questions that traditional models of training have not always made room for.

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The older I get, the more I value the role of the dramaturg. There is something profoundly meaningful about helping writers and collaborators shape the worlds of new plays. That work naturally overlaps with producing and organizing, and I continue to find joy in building the structures and relationships that allow creative work to happen.

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For more information about current projects and collaborations, please explore the links above. I’m almost always cooking up some kind of performance plan.

Biography:

Kamarie Chapman is a playwright, dramaturg, educator, and producer based in the Pacific Northwest. For the past sixteen years, she has taught playwriting, dramaturgy, storytelling, film, and performance at Western Washington University while continuing to develop new plays and collaborative performance projects of her own.

Though rooted in the Pacific Northwest, much of her artistic heart still belongs to Albuquerque and the surrounding mesas and high desert landscapes that shaped her years there as a playwright and graduate student. Her work is often drawn toward stories of community, memory, identity, and the complicated ways people try to care for one another.

In addition to teaching and writing, Kamarie Chairs the American College Theater Festival Region VII New Playwriting Program and serves as co-artistic director of Bellingham Story Hour, a community storytelling collective focused on accessibility, live performance, and human connection through shared experience.

Like many working artists, her creative life exists alongside a wide constellation of other responsibilities, including parenthood, nonprofit work, and co-running a local handyservice business with her spouse. She writes short plays, long plays, the occasional musical with friends, and still believes there may someday be a decent poem in her.

BELLINGHAM STORY HOUR WEBSITE