Kathy Rose Center

Kathy Rose Center didn't plan to become an actor. Fueled by a steady diet of sci-fi novels in her youth, she harbored dreams of becoming an astronaut. In 1968, a regional science fair competition won her a seat at the premier screening of "2001: A Space Odyssey" at the Cinerama Theater in Houston, a tour of NASA, and lunch with astronaut Vance Brand. In 1972, she earned her degree in Aerospace Engineering & Engineering Mechanics from the University of Texas at Austin. Then life intervened. She was the first woman engineer to be hired into the new product development lab at IBM in Austin, and continued to break new ground over the next 30 years in a variety of technical and project management roles. In 1993, for example, she published a series of papers on business process reengineering, represented IBM at several workflow technology conferences, and was cited in The Economist. In 2002, she took an early retirement to pursue new interests, to travel and take a myriad of classes: horseback riding, ballroom dancing, tai chi chuan, pottery, creative writing and so forth. Much to her surprise, starting with a class on "Playing Shakespeare," she discovered acting on stage and film to be a perfect outlet for her creative talents and energy. She has since studied acting, voice work and improvisation with such notable teachers as Alan Arkin, Gabriel Folse, Babs George, Michael Costello, Pato Hoffmann, Ben Taylor and Lainie Frasier. She has also studied film-making with Steve Mims at Austin Filmworks, and screenwriting with Jill Chamberlain, Michael Hauge of Story Mastery, and others. Kathy Rose is an active member of the Austin Writers Workshop, a organization that meets weekly to provide cold table readings and critiques for local screenwriters.