Playwright Kate Rich was recently announced as one of two Homer artists to receive the 2025 Connie Boochever Artist Fellowship award from the Alaska Arts and Culture Foundation and the Alaska State Council on the Arts.
According to a Dec. 10 press release, the fellowship was established to further a message that Boochever — a member of the first Alaska State Arts Council — championed throughout her life: that the arts are important to Alaskans and are worthy of significant support from individuals, businesses and corporations. The purpose of the fellowship — which comes with a $3,000 award for work in the performing arts, including theater and music — is to recognize and support Alaska emerging artists of exceptional talent.
Multi-disciplinary artist and “Momologues” writer Brianna Allen also was awarded the Connie Boochever Fellowship, Homer News previously reported. Allen plans to use her award to bring a new performance piece, titled “Thank You for Your Service,” to life this spring and to continue her mentorship with dramaturg Sandra Daley, whom she met last June at the Valdez Theatre Conference, to continue developing “Momologues.”
Kate Rich earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in writing with a focus on short stories from Vermont College. She discovered playwriting in 2007 when longtime Alaska and Homer resident, playwright and artist Mary Langham challenged her to write a play for the Valdez Theatre Conference Play Lab.
“From then on, I’ve just been writing plays,” she said.
Rich, whom the Alaska State Council on the Arts named in the release as an emerging artist, is known in Homer for hosting “New Plays Aloud,” a monthly play-reading group that performs staged readings, and more recently for writing “The Creel,” a one-act play that was produced as part of an immersive art exhibit, “Connected” by Sharlene Cline, hosted by the Pratt Museum in September. Her work has been produced in Alaska, California and Florida, and several of her plays have been workshopped in the annual Valdez Theatre Conference Play Lab. She is using her fellowship award to fund an extended solo retreat in the southwestern U.S., where she is revising a full-length play and taking part in a writer’s group.
This new play, which she said was previously titled “The Break Room,” went through a Theater Alaska workshop, led by New York-based playwright and New Dramatists resident Julia Izumi, in April 2024 in Juneau.
“I was fortunate to hear this work performed over Zoom by professional actors, and I received a lot of useful script feedback,” Rich wrote in an email to the Homer News Monday.
Rich’s work often explores themes including ageism, rural isolation and mental health stigmas, and emphasizes resilience through human connection, taking risks and embracing challenges.
She wrote Monday that the play formerly titled “The Break Room” follows this path in its exploration of how chosen family and shared purpose can serve as tools to overcome systemic isolation. She hopes to see it workshopped in Valdez during this year’s conference.
Rich wrote that she is also making plans to attend the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a three-week “cultural extravaganza” that she said “is sure to widen my understanding of theater and inspire me to take bigger creative risks.” The Fringe is the world’s largest performing arts festival and will be held in August this year in Scotland.
“I was fortunate enough to be at a place with my lifestyle and my job that I could take this time,” she said. “I am deeply grateful to the Alaska Arts and Culture Foundation and encourage other artists and writers to apply for the Connie Boochever grant in future years.”
“The Creel” will be produced for a second time in February by the Kenai Art Center, with Pier One Theatre Executive Director Jennifer Norton returning as director and with performances by the original cast members from the Homer production.
Kate Rich’s one-act play, “The Creel,” is performed in September 2025 in Homer, Alaska. Photo provided by Jennifer Norton
