Headshot for Cate Clelland

Cate Clelland (she/her)

Cate has been a Canberra-based theatre practitioner for many years, working with several theatre companies mainly as director and/or designer. She loves both directing and designing. The thing she most loves (and finds most scary) about directing and set designing is the process which takes us from printed words on a page or a sketch of a set-plan, and then moves on to creating an on-stage reality within a full-sized 3-dimensional structure – a kind of magic really. 

Cate is interested in working on both plays and musicals. 

Her most recent theatre involvement in plays has been directing/designing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Sense and Sensibility for REP, and directing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Speaking in Tongues (2023 Ovation Award for Outstanding Production) and August: Osage County (2024) for Free-Rain.

Her set design for REP’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone won her an Ovation Award for Best Set for a Play last year. Her designs for plays include sets for Free-Rain’s Emerald City, Steel Magnolias, and A Streetcar Named Desire at ACT Hub. Most recently she has directed Sophocles’ Antigone, performed at the National Botanical Gardens for Greek Theatre Now.

Cate’s involvement in musicals goes back to the 1990s when she directed Hot Mikado for Canberra Philharmonic (CAT Award for Best Director of a Musical) and designed costumes for REP’s 1999 Old Time Music Hall (CAT Award for Best Costume Designer for a Musical). 

For Free-Rain she has directed/designed CATS! (at the ANU Arts Centre) and Les Misérables (at The Q). She designed Guys and Dolls (at The Q), The Phantom of the Opera and The Little Mermaid (both at Canberra Theatre), and Kinky Boots, My Fair Lady and Billy Elliot (2024) (all at The Q).

She is pleased to be back at ACT Hub, and to be working on this fascinating play for Free-Rain.
Cate likes to be involved in works of ‘substance’ and this one certainly ticks that box!

Productions