Kate Fuglei is a multifaceted American artist, renowned for her work in television, film, and theater. Her recent performance as Anna Akhmatova in the musical Beautiful Lady at LaMama in New York City, directed by Anne Bogart with music by Liz Swados, garnered significant attention.
Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Kate grew up in a blue-collar family, fortunate to have a high school drama teacher related to Henrik Ibsen. Her first role was in Lorraine Hansberry's The Sign In Sidney Brustein's Window. Kate began her professional career at the Guthrie Theater under the co-artistic directorship of Liviu Ciulei and Garland Wright, earning a McKnight Fellowship under the Playwright's Center in Minneapolis.
She co-founded the theater company DearKnows in New York City, creating new works, including a series of plays based on James Joyce's Dubliners. Kate worked at the Public Theater in Love's Labor's Lost under Gerald Freedman's direction, Arena Stage in Crime and Punishment under Yuri Lyubimov's direction, and Portland Stage in Man Ist Man under Liz Diamond's direction, among many others.
Since relocating to Los Angeles in 1990, Kate has appeared in over forty television shows, features, and short films, most recently on Star Trek: Picard, This Is Us, and in the short film I Live On Your Visits, based on a Dorothy Parker short story. She also performed in the first National Broadway Tour of the Tony Award-winning musical Spring Awakening, directed by Michael Mayer.
Kate has also performed in various theaters on the West Coast, including Our Town at the LaJolla Playhouse, A Streetcar Named Desire at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, and The Red and The Black at A Contemporary Theater in Seattle.
In 2014, Kate's one-woman show Rachel Calof, a musical based on the memoir of a Jewish homesteader, won Best Musical at the United Solo Festival in New York City. Rachel Calof has been toured across the country and performed at historic venues such as the Pico Union Project in Los Angeles.
Kate has published four novels based on the lives of Enrico Fermi, Maria Montessori, Frank Capra, and Federico Fellini with Mentoris Press. She is married to award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and television writer Ken LaZebnik and is the proud mother of Jack LaZebnik, a West Point graduate and former Army Ranger, and Ben LaZebnik, a graduate of Columbia University and current student at Berkeley Law.
Kate expresses her gratitude to her family, mentors, and teachers, including Austin Pendleton, Janet Alhanti, Julie Bovasso, Ken Brecher, Karen Morrow, Joanne Zajak, Kay Montgomery, and James Eckhouse.
