Kirsten Trump is a professor of theatre at Shenandoah Conservatory where she has directed twenty-seven plays in her twenty-three years here, and where each year of teaching, coaching and directing has become better than the last and each play she directs has become her new favorite. And, of course, Our Town is no exception. Recent additional credits include working in January of this year, as dialect coach for a workshop of Harmon Dot Aut’s new play The Bridge with director/playwright Craig Lucas (Prelude to a Kiss, Reckless, Blue Window, The Night at the Piazza), commissioned for development and production by The Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Trump’s coaching work includes over eighty plays, and she has most recently worked as a coach for CATF’s 2025 Side Effects May Include by Lisa Loomer, Tornado Tastes Like Aluminum Sting by Harmon Dot Aut in 2024 and Redeemed by Chisa Hutchinson in 2023. In previous seasons, Trump has worked on world premieres of such notable American playwrights as Lee Blessing, Keith Glover and Catherine Filleaux. You can also see Trump in a cameo role this year in the Shenandoah University film department’s feature film, Miss Valentine, directed by Blayne Weaver and co-produced by Los Angeles-based Capital Arts Entertainment.