Bess Wallerstein Huff

Bess Wallerstein Huff has worked professionally in the performing arts for nearly thirteen years striving to find the delicate balance between art and business. 

As an arts administrator, Bess has worked as the Director of Operations and Community Relations for the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, Presentation Manager for Theater League, Fundraising Coordinator for the Prairie Village Jazz Festival, and Producer of the Kansas City Improv Festival.

Bess Wallerstein Huff is the founder and creator of two performance companies.  One Time Productions, an environmental theatre company that produces live theatre in non-traditional spaces and engulfs audiences into the living theater experience.  She is also the founder and chief member of CounterClockwise Comedy, an experimental improvisational comedy group that most recently "roasted" over fifty popular films (a la Mystery Science Theatre 3000) by providing live, improvised commentary over movies in partnership with Screenland Theatres.  Popular roasts include Dirty Dancing, Top Gun, The Bodyguard and Karate Kid.  For CCC, Bess developed Lebowski Live an audience interactive viewing of The Big Lebowski.  
 

As an actor and playwright, Bess has worked at the Fishtank Performance Studio on two new works that explored the tabloid travesty of popular culture.  She co-created White Nose Christmas: A Tabloid Nativity of Rehab and Rebirth and Bump.  She is also a founding ensemble member of Eat Their Words, a group that reads and interprets the works of celebrity biographies.  In addition, Bess is a director and producer who has staged plays and musicals and produced/founded festivals and events.

Bess has served as a judge of theatre performance for the Arts Council of Johnson County's Shooting Stars program, a premiere judge for Christian Youth Theatre's Improvathon, and hosted the 2010 Kansas City Addy Awards at the Midland Theatre.

Bess was a Creative Capital participant in 2008 in partnership with the Charlotte Street Foundation and the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City.

 

She is currently Director of Marketing + Community Outreach for the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.