People
FACULTY & STAFF DIRECTORY

Catherine Moore

Teaching Professor, Movement


Ms. Moore has been on the faculty of the School of Drama since 2000. She specializes in physical approaches to actor training and promotes the creation of new work by students. She has been the Co-Faculty Coordinator of the School of Drama’s PLAYGROUND: A Festival of Independent Student Work since its inception in 2003.


Her teaching includes Viewpoints, Introductory level Suzuki, Laban, Michael Chekhov Technique, and Stage Combat. She has taught acting, scene-to-song, and directed multiple junior performance projects. Internationally, Moore has taught movement workshops at the New National Theatre of Tokyo Drama Studio and at Il Melograno Scuola di Recitazione in Rome, Italy.

Moore has served as Fight Director or Movement Coach for over 80 productions in the School of Drama. Representative productions include: Ragtime, The Rover, Anthony and Cleopatra, The Rivals, Sweeney Todd, Spring Awakening, Mad Forest, In the Blood, Richard III, The Piano Lesson, Equus, Marisol, The Duchess of Malfi, Trojan Women: A Love Story, The Playboy of the Western World, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Moore also served as Fight Director for the School of Music’s productions of The Consul and Albert Herring.

Moore maintains an active professional career as actor and fight director. As an actor she has performed in both plays and musical in regional theaters across the United States including the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and the Ordway Theatre in St. Paul. In Pittsburgh, her work has been seen in numerous productions with the Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre (PICT), and Quantum Theatre. Internationally, Moore performed in the acclaimed PICT Irish Tour of Brian Friel’s Faith Healer throughout the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

As Fight Director, her work includes The Diary of Anne Frank at the Cleveland Play House, Disgraced at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre, The Rape of Lucretia and I Capuleti E I Montecchi at The Pittsburgh Opera, productions at the Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre including The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Pillowman, and numerous productions at Pittsburgh’s City Theatre including The Night Alive, Marcus, or the Secret of Sweet, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, among others.

Moore has been commissioned by numerous symphony orchestras to create narrations for orchestral concerts. She collaborated with Keith Lockhart, Music Director of the Boston Pops Orchestra in the creation of Romeo and Juliet: Shakespeare in Words and Music, and Women Composers, which have been performed by the Chicago, Boston, and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras. She also collaborated on a series of Young People’s Concerts for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Maestro Yaron Traub. Commissioned by the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada, Moore created a narration based on the letters of Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann for Music Director Pinchas Zukerman and created the narration for and directed a concert version of Bizet’s Carmen for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Music Director Andreas Delfs.

Moore is a member of the Society of American Fight Directors and received recognition as “Best Female Actor Combatant” three years in a row at the SAFD National Stage Combat Workshop held at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is also a member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Associate for Theatre in Higher Education, and the Association of Theatre Movement Educators. Moore received her BFA, Magna Cum Laude, from Wright State University and her MFA in Dramatic Performance from the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music, where she was honored as the recipient of the Julia Winter Cohen Alumni Award for Career Excellence.

Dedicated to community service, Moore was the recipient of the Eli Rabin Memorial Award in 2016 by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for her volunteer work in their No One Dies Alone program. This award recognizes and honors a nominated volunteer who continues the patient focused ideals of comfort, kindness, caring, and involvement. This award is the highest level of recognition for a volunteer at UPMC.