Derek Trautwein

Derek Trautwein is a Kansas City theatre artist with a wide berth of professional and educational experiences. After graduating from Northwest Missouri State University in 2009 with a B.A. in Theatre Performance, he received his M.A. in Theatre History in 2012 from the University of Central Missouri. During his time at UCM, Trautwein began his journey as a carpenter and technical director to accompany his endeavors in acting, directing and playwriting. From 2013 to 2023, he served as faculty at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. Initially hired as the technical director, he oversaw all sound, light and scenic elements and was then promoted to assistant professor and department chair in 2021. During that time he served his students and faculty not just as a TD, but in a variety of positions as a fellow actor, director and designer. Favorite productions directed include "Buried Child" by Sam Shepard, "God of Carnage" by Yasmina Reza, "Faust: Part 1" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and "The Little Shop of Horrors." Trautwein's final directing spotlight, "The Mousetrap" by Agatha Christie, culminated in a completely sold out run and received a Meritorious Achievement Award for Play Direction from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in 2023.

Since 2006, Trautwein has been a working professional in multiple disciplines and fields of theatre and performance. In Kansas City, he has worked with the Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Kansas City Public Theatre, KC Melting Pot Theatre, Relevance Productions, Card Table Theatre and Stuffed Buffalo Productions. He also spent a year in Denver, working for The Three Leaches Productions, Spark Theatre and EfilF Productions. Since 2012, he has participated in the Kansas City Fringe Festival, producing over a dozen pieces of original works of his own such as "Stagehands: The Musical," "The Islander," "Lookin’ for a Fight," "Revelations," "Deceit," "The Spooky Sh*t Show" and "Gutterthief." "Deceit" earned Trautwein the inaugural Mark Edelman Best New Play Award in 2019. His original plays have also been featured for Kansas City Public Theatre and Olathe Civic Theatre in their New Works Festival three years in a row as well as making three appearances in the Kansas City Horror Play Festival. Recently he was the technical director of "Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812" at The Black Box, "The Shooter" produced by Trish Mitchell at the Just Off Broadway Theatre and "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" at the Coterie Theatre. As a playwright, Trautwein has produced and directed his own work, "Gutterthief," in the KC Fringe Festival and was a featured playwright in The Living Room Theatre’s annual "No Sleep November." He also graced the stage as Tim Ward in "This Random World: The Myth of Serendipity" by Stephen Dietz at the Just Off Broadway Theatre and as Walter Hobbs in Padgett Productions’ "Elf the Musical."