Geoff Kanick is a performer, magician, and theatremaker originally from Tacoma, Washington and now based in NYC.

Geoff began juggling knives at age 13 (torches came later that year) and got his first straight jacket at 14. Blending improvisation, physical theatre, and illusion, Geoff creates immersive, poetic work that locates the awe-inspiring in the everyday.

Geoff was an original cast member of Drama Desk award-winning Queen Of The Night at The Paramount in Times Square, starring as Sarastro and serving as a member of the resident creative team. Geoff was the Co-Creator and Host of The Conjurors’ Club at the American Repertory Theatre. Geoff has also served as Resident Director of Randy Weiner and Ryan Heffington’s immersive spectacle Seeing You, has toured one-man shows across the country, and received the distinction of Seattle Performing Artist of the Year. He is an alum of the SDCF Observership Program, The Orchard Project Greenhouse, and The Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab. He is Founding Co-Artistic Director of LubDub Theatre Co.

Geoff has developed work with The Orchard Project, Ars Nova, Kitchen Sink Residency at Theatre Row/Building for the Arts, Georgetown University, HERE Arts, Target Margin, American Repertory Theater, MinuteZero, Fisher Center at Bard, and more. 

Geoff holds a master’s with distinction from East 15 and a BA from Gonzaga. He has also trained at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and at the London Dramatic Academy.

ARTIST STATEMENT //

I am in love with storytelling. I believe there is beauty in myth and wonder in science. 

As an artist, I am preoccupied by questions that revolve around themes of memory and ritual, beauty and absurdity, silence and waiting, the macro and micro.

My work emerges from physical improvisation, found text, writing prompts, and images.

I am most interested in ensemble-devised work. I am committed to making theatre that views the audience as a key collaborator, dissolving the boundary between performer and audience and inviting everyone into the conversation.

I like to begin with questions that grow and shift into physical gesture. Through my work with LubDub Theatre Co, I have become interested in a mode of storytelling that relies on what we call total language: fluid storytelling that shifts between words, dance, physicality, music, magic, and design. As a company, LubDub writes, embodies, connects, re-writes, re-embodies, re-connects, allowing form and content to develop symbiotically. Much of the work I make is wordless. I strive to make theatre that is fiercely physically, because I believe in the body’s ability to communicate universal truth beyond linguistic, cultural, and other barriers. For me, the most powerful moments on stage – as in life – happen in silence. In the moments between. 

Here's to oral tradition, myth, and deep truth - to being human, sitting around a table together, and delighting in mystery.