Kristen Coury

Kristen Coury is the Founder, CEO and Producing Artistic Director of Gulfshore Playhouse. She founded the Playhouse in 2004, and shortly thereafter started producing with no staff and virtually no funding. Under her leadership, the Playhouse has grown to a staff of 83 people with an annual budget of $14.5M with no long-term debt.

Kristen led the charge to create the iconic $75M state-of-the-art Baker Theatre and Education Center at the gateway to downtown Naples, which opened on November 1, 2024. As part of this project, Coury ignited one of the largest public/private partnerships in City of Naples history, initiating a land-swap with the Wynn family and, together, donating over an acre of land to the City upon which to build a public parking garage.

While in New York, she worked on Broadway for Walt Disney Theatrical Productions, and for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s company, The Really Useful Group, and made her feature film directorial debut with an independent film entitled Friends and Family. Kristen is also a frequent investor in Broadway productions, most recently A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical.

Kristen has directed nearly 50 productions for the Playhouse. Recently, she directed the final professional production in the Norris Center, the musical She Loves Me, and the inaugural show in the Baker Theatre and Education Center, Anything Goes. She is now hard at work at the helm of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Kristen was named one of the Men and Women of the Year by Gulfshore Life in 2013 and again in 2024. She also received the Murray Hendel Award for Civic Achievement in 2023. She served two terms on the board of Theatre Communications Group, the national advocacy group for professional theatre and is currently a member of the board of the Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce. Kristen is very honored to have been appointed to Florida Council for arts and culture by Senate President Kathleen Passidomo. She was named one of the Top 100 Most Influential Business Leaders in Collier County for the last four years.