Kristen Kelso is an actor, director, and solo performance artist whose work explores memory, loss, and translation through text, movement, music, and interdisciplinary storytelling.

As a director, Kelso brings a highly visual, movement-driven approach to the stage. Her directing practice is deeply collaborative, emphasizing physicality, rhythm, and the power of image-driven narratives. Her directing work has been seen at The Mercury Store, The Chain Theatre, the Gene Frankel, Cry Havoc Theatre Company, Cara Mía Theatre Co., and Shakespeare Dallas, among others.

As a solo performer, Kelso’s work is rooted in an oral storytelling tradition, drawing from personal archives. Her work often incorporates verbatim text, recordings, and archival material, transforming personal and collective histories into poetic, highly theatrical storytelling. She explores how language shifts across borders—linguistically, bodily, and emotionally—using translation as a generative process rather than a fixed result. Through autofiction, she reframes memory and identity, questioning the boundaries between truth and narrative invention.

She graduated with an MA from NYU in Performance Studies, an MA from UT Dallas in Translation (Spanish), and a BFA from Southern Methodist University in Theatre Studies.