Bio:

Caroline Holmes is a queer femme dramaturg, director, and performer who believes in putting people first and prioritizing a healthy production process while striving for a robust product. At Carnegie Mellon, she will receive her BFA in Dramaturgy with a double minor in French and English Literature & Culture, graduating on the Dean’s List with a 4.0 QPA. 

At CMU, she was lead dramaturg for two School of Drama productions: As You Like It by Shakespeare, and Penelope by Enda Walsh. She leads by uplifting the voices and perspectives of every team member to work towards a collective understanding of the text within the unique artistic vision of the production. For each piece, she curated a dramaturgical website for the cast and production team to grasp relevant contextual information in an accessible format. 

https://ceholmes4.wixsite.com/penelope 

https://ceholmes4.wixsite.com/asyoulikeit 

Caroline has a passion for developing and executing immersive and interactive lobby experiences to bring audiences into the world of the play before they step into the theater, and to deepen their opportunities to reflect on the themes of the production. For As You Like It, Caroline constructed a tree out of recycled metal and built a community space surrounding the tree utilizing scrap pieces of turf from the scenic design. Audiences were invited to write a response to a prompt on colorful paper cut into the shape of a leaf and then hang their leaf on the “Tree of Love”, which blossomed into color over the run of the show. The display engaged with the themes of the production’s artistic vision which sought to bring a queer lens to the text through nontraditional casting featuring non-binary performers in the roles of Rosalind and Orlando. 

Caroline has performed and directed with the CMU student theater group, Scotch’n’Soda. She directed RENT, envisioning and leading an ensemble-driven production process, featuring the organization’s largest cast since before the pandemic. 

She has developed her skills as a scholar and speaker of French, spending a semester abroad studying immersive French classes at L’Institut Catholique de Paris. She is completing her French minor with an Independent Study where she will develop her curriculum for French students learning English utilizing the history of American Theater and its correlation to cultural movements to help students gain an understanding of 20th century American history and to strengthen their speaking skills through theatrical exercises and text work.