Kate Hennig

Kate Hennig is a Canadian actress and playwright who serves as associate artistic director of the Shaw Festival. Born in Harlow, Ontario, near London, she grew up in a household led by her father, a Lutheran minister. Her family relocated to Edmonton when she was seven years old. She attended York University before leaving without completing her degree, and later earned a master's from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London in 2002.

Hennig's stage career spans both performance and writing. On Broadway, she appeared in Billy Elliot: The Musical and Irving Berlin's White Christmas between 2008 and 2010. Her work in Billy Elliot also earned her a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 2011. Earlier, in 2003, she received a Dora nomination for Best Actress in a Play in the Large Theatre category for The Danish Play. Prior to her Broadway years, she performed as Sally Bowles in Cabaret in Calgary, a run that concluded in 2001 before she returned to Toronto.

Beyond the stage, Hennig received a Genie Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 1993 for her role in Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. Her additional film credits include Mrs. Winterbourne and The Claim. On television, she appeared in Bomb Girls, Saving Hope, and L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. In 2019, she directed Holiday Inn at the Shaw Festival.

As a playwright, Hennig authored The Last Wife, The Virgin Trial, and Mother's Daughter, which together form the Queenmaker Trilogy, as well as other works including The Eleventh David, More, Drowning Out of Water, and a translation and adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac. The Virgin Trial earned her a nomination for Outstanding New Play at the 2017 Dora Mavor Moore Awards and a shortlisting for the Governor General's Award for English-language drama at the 2017 Governor General's Awards. Hennig was previously married to Ian Prinsloo.