Catherine Weidner is a professor in the Schol of Music, Theatre & Dance at Ithaca College. She is a teacher, professional director and actor. She served as Chair from 2013-2021, and as Interim Director of Ithaca College’s London Center in 2021-2022.

Her professional directing includes multiple seasons for Theater at Monmouth in Maine, including Two Gentlemen of Verona, Othello, As You Like It, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. For the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, NY, she served as Voice and Text Coach for Joe Calarco’s Shakespeare’s R&J, and appeared on stage in Little Women, Third and Other Desert Cities..  Other professional credits include directing a one-person Henry V for Austin Shakespeare, an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma for Nebraska Repertory Theatre; Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus, and Merry Wives of Windsor for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, and Or, by Liz Duffy Adams at Caffeine Theatre in Chicago. For Ithaca College, she has directed Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Company and Cabaret.  As an Equity actress she has worked at The Kennedy Center in A Streetcar Named Desire with Patricia Clarkson, Amy Ryan and Noah Emmerich, directed by Garry Hynes; at Center Stage in Baltimore in Blithe Spirit, and Mary Stuart; and at Arena Stage in Washington, DC in The Heidi Chronicles, directed by Tazewell Thompson.  Her film credits include The Night House  featuring Rebecca Hall, There is a Hole in the Ground by Aidan Cronin, and One by Le Wang. She has worked at The Guthrie Theater under Garland Wright, Theatre de la Jeune Lune under John Clark Donahue, the La Jolla Playhouse under Des McAnuff, and with Bread & Puppet with Peter Schuman.  She holds a BFA in Acting from Ithaca College and an MFA in Directing from the University of Minnesota, and trained at Complicite in London, The Second City in Chicago and The Neighborhood Playhouse in New York.  For ten years she was the Program Director of The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Academy for Classical Acting at the George Washington University, offering a one-year MFA in Classical Acting under the leadership of Michael Kahn.  From 2007- 2013 she taught Classical Acting and Heightened Text at The Theatre School at DePaul University, where she served as Head of BFA Acting.  She is a member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers (SDC). Related writing projects include: an iambic pentameter adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel The Woodlanders, a comic operetta libretto of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s masterpiece The Rivals, and an adaptation of George Eliot’s novel Silas Marner for families and young audiences.