Bio

Kevin DiPirro is a writer, theater-maker, and deviser who teaches at Stanford University. His performance works have been produced in New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and at Stanford. These include: Through Shite to Shannon; Big Fun; An Ache in the Engine; Mobl’d Queens’s Good; Rennaisance Play(ge); Hadleyburg; Feeld Play; and The Underworld. A graduate of Swarthmore, Berkeley, and SF State, he has been a Hewlett Fellow for American Theatre magazine and has published digital scholarship in CCC. With his devised work, Kevin uses immersive participatory live story engagements to create space for those in complex communities for re-experiencing the story—and themselves--as relational, reciprocal, and co-creative beings. What stories might we tell communally with our own bodies and on this earth, that, to paraphrase Haraway, destabilize our own habituated stories and retell them as other, more expansive, ones? How might human practices of food, music, storytelling, role-playing, movement, and ritual be incorporated in live performance to activate such tellings, re-memberings, and re-tellings? Kevin’s most recent interests include exploring healing at the intersections of these lively arts—writing, gardening, cooking, swimming, and hiking--locally. Kevin has two college-age kids and lives on the coast in Pacifica, CA.

Academic Appointments

  • Advanced Lecturer, Program in Writing and Rhetoric

Honors & Awards

  • Major Grant Award - Digital Scholarly Article, Performance Issue, CCC Journal, Stanford Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education (2011)
  • Grant Award Winner - Staging Hadleyburg Project, Stanford Institute for the Creative Arts (2010)
  • Major Grant Award - Devised Theater Project, Stanford Institute for the Creative Arts (2009)
  • William and Flora Hewlet Foundation Fellowship, American Theatre Magazine (2010-2012)
  • Distinguished Lecturer of the Year, University of San Francisco (1996-97)
  • High Honors, Swarthmore College (1988)
  • Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Beta Kappa Society (1988)

Professional Education

  • MFA, S.F. State, Creative Writing, Playwriting (2013)
  • MA, U.C. Berkeley, English literature, Orality, Celtic Studies (1992)
  • BA, School of Irish Studies, Irish literature, history and language (1986)
  • BA, Swarthmore College, English literature, religion (1988)

Links

Current Research and Scholarly Interests

I am a theater deviser who stages site-specific gatherings that connect people with a chosen place and through various modes of storytelling, movement, ritual, food, and breakout stations utilize the experience of embodied inclusion in the live action story to activate immersive explorations into the questions the performance piece asks. I've staged a contemporary live retelling of The Handless Maiden Tale in and among the spaces of Stanford's Old Union, Nitery Theater, and Redwood picnic area. I've also staged a transhistorical dustbowl piece called Feeld Play at SF State. Most recently, I have been developing solo projects that involved public processionals of inward-facing "pilgrims" in settings like the Stanford Quad, the Cantor's Sequence, and the Golden Gate Bridge. My current work is adding art installations like tapestries or banners or hanging work that nestles in trees, or sprouts up from the earth, or entwines with other plants in natural settings. I've completed a Fear/Love Yoko Ono-inspired bronze tagged ceanothus bush, as well as the Golden Phoenix Simorgh bird made of spraypainted golden and orange bull rush seaweed from Clarissa Pinkola Estes' collected story, The Conference of the Birds. I am interested in what kinds of processional and ritual engagements might be called up in these art-filled natural spaces.

Projects

  • Three Bands, La Villetta

    A 7x3 foot treated and spray-painted tarp with horizonatal bands of adhered yucca leaves / soil / and collaged cut fabrics like swimsuits, boxers, jeans, placemats and tee shirts.

    Location

    1126 Manzanita Dr

    For More Information:

  • Downslope Deck and Stairs, La Villetta

    33 1/3 steps hewn into the hardtack and clay Linda Mar hill soil using natural wood, reclaimed treated posts, rebar, and Home Depot Stringers that culminate in an 8x6 hand made floating toasted sand Trex deck under a sacred snaking twin oak tree.

    Location

    1126 Manzanita Dr

    For More Information:

  • Golden Simorgh amid Mountains and Valleys and Seven Pierced Heart Plant, La Villetta

    Golden and orange spraypainted beach collected ocean bull kelp seaweed with painted gold feathers above hand-cut aluminum sheets representing the Pierced Heart Flaming Plant and the four valleys of yearning, immaculate heart, knowing, and detachment from the Bird's Conference story

    Location

    1126 Manzanita Dr

    For More Information:

2026-27 Courses

All Publications

  • Revising/Devising Student-Centered Performance College Composition and Communication DiPirro, K. 2012; 1 (1)
  • Beautiful Friendships American Theatre Magazine DiPirro, K. 2012
  • Mamet and the 99 American Theatre Magazine DiPirro, K. 2012
  • The Aunt Lute Anthology of U.S. Women Writers edited by DiPirro, K. Aunt Lute Publishers. 2008
  • Big Fun, A Play DiPirro, K. Bay Area One Acts Publishers. 2005 ; Bay Area One Acts (4): 14