About

KENDRA FANCONI is a director, writer and creator of original site-specific theatre works. She co-founded The Only Animal, a company uniquely dedicated to theatre that springs from a deep engagement with place and led the company as Artistic Director for 17 years.  Kendra is known for her love of the impossible.

Selected Credits for directing/writing: Magic Hour, directed by Kim Collier, Slime, written by Bryony Lavery, tinkers, based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel by Paul Harding, Nothing But Sky, a living comic book, NiX, theatre of snow and ice, at the 2010 Cultural Olympiad, and Sea of Hearts with 1000 climate protestors.

Over 20 years Kendra was lead artist on over 30 shows which were nominated for over 30 Jessie and Betty Awards – winning twenty, including Outstanding Production and three Significant Artistic Achievement awards. Kendra’s work received the David Suzuki Foundation National Rewilding Award and the PACT Inaugural Green Award in 2022. Her play in a pool, The One that Got Away, won the People’s Choice Award for the Best Show in Festival History at Magnetic North Theatre Festival (National).

This year, her eco-restorative project, 1000 Year Theatre will open  at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.  And four short films that Kendra wrote and co-directed set on a submarine called The Deep, will open this fall at Vancouver Maritime Museum. 

Kendra founded and led the Artist Brigade, bringing arts and artists to the front lines of the climate movement, resulting in 19 commissioned works and counting among its impacts, a contribution to the preservation of the old-growth forest, Dakota Bear Sanctuary and the Songbird Forest. Kendra contributes to this work in art/climate on the National level as a founding member of SCALE, Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency, and on the Sunshine Coast as an artist of Living Forest Institute. She teaches her unique brand of eco-restorative creation at universities in Canada and the US. She often speaks about the intersection of art and climate. 

Currently based in Sunshine, Colorado, Kendra is making work with clouds, wildflowers, wind, snowdrifts, and the narrative of deer trails. 

Kendra is a farmer, a forager, partner to a philosopher and mother to two kids who are real characters.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD KENDRA’S RESUME