Katie Naka

Katie Naka is a devotee of all roles starting with “P”- producer, product manager, program manager (okay fine and some that don’t: scrum master, director, and writer) currently residing in Boston, MA. Most recently she was at Wayfair from 2019-2024, swinging around the career jungle gym from Scrum Master to PMO, from Customer Success to Organizational Excellence- from Program to Product- all the way to Senior Manager over 5 engineering teams kicking off a brand-new Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) function.

Prior to Wayfair, she was a Producer and Writer for Harmonix Music Systems on RockbandVR, Dropmix, and Fuser. While working for Harmonix Katie became a certified Scum Master through the Scrum Alliance and learned more about games than the average theatre kid, that’s for sure.

Prior to relocating to Boston from Brooklyn, Katie worked mostly in immersive theatre and contemporary live performance/opera.  In 2015 she served as Line Producer for Persona and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize winning opera Angel's Bone for Beth Morrison Projects.  Katie also held freelance positions as Associate Director for The Walking Dead Experience and interim Production Manager for Pig Iron Theatre Company.  On the side, she produced a new show for Piehole in Brooklyn at JACK  and directed a new play: Emilie for the Austrian Cultural Forum about Gustav Klimt and Emilie Floge.

Originally from Lincolnwood, IL- Katie moved to New York in 2004 after completing her BFA in Acting (minor in Playwriting) at Emerson College in Boston, MA.  In 2013, she completed her MFA in Theatre Direction at Columbia University where she studied under Anne Bogart and Andrei Serban.  Her work has been seen at 3 Legged Dog, The Midtown International Theatre festival, The New York International Fringe Festival, Galapagos Art Space, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Columbia University, and The Women Center Stage Director's Weekend at the Living Theater.  She is an alumna of the 2011 Chicago Director's Lab, Springboard NYC, and New York Neo-Futurists Basic Training.

Over the years Katie has also done a fair share of freelance writing.  She was a contributing editor to the 2007 Not For Tourists Guide: Brooklyn.  Her work has also appeared on Howlround, Bandshell Magazine, Reservoir Online Magazine, and OutLet Magazine.  Her plays have been performed at the New York International Fringe, F.O.O.T. (Festival of Original Theatre in Toronto, CN), The Field's Emerging Artist Showcase at The Kitchen, and she was a runner up for the Rod Parker Playwriting Fellowship at Emerson College.  Her life/theatre blog I'd Rather Be Doing It has been reposted by PS122, La Mama, and oft quoted by the artists that she writes about (Radical Evolution, Zoe|Juniper, etc)

Other directing work includes: Resident Director for Play/Date with Michael Counts, Assistant to circus choreographer Gypsy Snider (Les 7 Doigts De La Main) on Pippin at A.R.T. in Cambridge,  MA (Directed by Diane Paulus) Tony Award winner for best Revival of a Musical 2013, Assistant to Andrei Şerban on the Hungarian premiere of Tony Kushner’s Angels In America (Parts 1 & 2) at the National Theater in Budapest, 2012, Assistant and Associate director to Michael Counts on Philharmonic 360 (staging the NY Phil at the Park Ave Armory, 2012), Moses In Egypt (City Opera, 2013), and Fighting Gravity (2013). 

Other Managerial/Producer work: Artistic Direction Manager for Blue Man Productions 2013-2015 and Producer for Polybe+Seats 2014 site specific piece "Anna Asli Suriyah"