Brenda Dodge

Author of Character Kids: 135 Creative Drama Games to Help Build Confidence, Connection & Creativity

Brenda Dodge is a children’s theater director, producer and teaching artist. For over 20 years, she has collaborated with public and private schools, youth theaters, community centers and park districts to create quality theater education programs for students of all ages.

In 2008, she founded Character Kids LLC, a company that provides after-school theater classes to elementary schools and advocates for arts in education. Ms. Dodge has worked in close collaboration with classroom teachers, administrators and parents in dozens of school districts throughout the country and, as a result, Character Kids has reached tens of thousands of students in cities such as San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago, Milwaukee and Minneapolis.

In addition to her work in theater education, Ms. Dodge is a professional actress who has worked in theater, commercials and television throughout the Midwest and Southern California.

Ms. Dodge also serves as Executive Director of Forte Theatre Company, a professional theater in Milwaukee’s Southwest suburbs that she co-founded with her husband. She has a B.A. in Theatre, with a minor in mass communications, from Illinois State University. Ms. Dodge resides in Franklin, WI with her husband and two children.