About
Anne Penner is an actor, director, teacher, and podcaster living in Denver with her family. She is passionate about teaching and creating performances that express the fullness of the human experience with actor bodies, voices, and imaginations that are expressive, powerful, intelligent, precise, spontaneous, and free.
As an actor, Anne performs with various Colorado theater companies, including the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Local Theater Company, Butterfly Effect Theatre of Colorado (BETC), Stories on Stage, and her own company, Sis Tryst Productions. Recent roles include Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, Penelope in The Odyssey, Margaret in Richard III, Portia in Julius Caesar (all with Colorado Shakespeare Festival), The Pilot in Grounded (Sis Tryst Productions), Lady M in The Lady M Project (Local Theater Company), Soccer Mom in The Wolves (BETC), and as Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking (Stories on Stage).
She has co-written a play called The Lady M Project, which Local Theater Company is fully producing in spring 2023.
As a director credits include Antigone, Stop Kiss, The Wolves, and Kid-Simple (University of Denver Theatre Department), Gidion’s Knot (Sis Tryst Productions), and an educational tour of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (Colorado Shakespeare Festival).
As a teacher, she is an associate professor in the University of Denver (DU) Theatre Department, where she teaches acting, directing, movement, and voice. She also teaches movement and voice at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts Education Department, for various programs beyond the Theatre Department at DU (Daniels College of Business, Prisons Arts Initiative, Office of Admissions), and in other educational settings (Colorado Shakespeare Festival Education and her children’s schools).
As a podcaster, she and her DU Psychology colleague, Kateri McRae, have researched, hosted, and produced four seasons of The Actor’s Mind, a popular podcast that discusses the intersection of acting and psychology.
Anne has a BA from Amherst College and an MFA in Acting from Columbia University’s School of the Arts.