Carolyn Kennedy & Peter C. Graupner
Partners in Production
Background in Entertainment & Education:
Carolyn Kennedy and her husband, Executive Producer, Peter C. Graupner, are long time entertainment professionals. With more than 35 years of experience in production, Peter Graupner is an Emmy-winning member of The Directors’ Guild of America; a First Assistant Director/Production Manager in film and television with over 87 feature film, movies of the week, television series, sit-com and commercial credits including such productions as Andersonville, Nightmare on Elm Street, Walker: Texas Ranger, Chaplin, Seinfeld, Jake & The FatMan, Perry Mason, Hunter, Cheers, Moonlighting, and Clueless.
Carolyn Kennedy Graupner has spent her life working in the film business, television, and theatre in all capacities of storytelling, including performance (in radio, on stage, and on camera), production (as director/producer), writing, and production contract management and development. Kennedy is a second-generation entertainment ‘hyphenate’ who started in television at age 4, and began her professional writing career with awards from both Scholastic Magazine and Atlantic Monthly Magazine before heading off to London after college to edit internationally renowned Theatre Quarterly Magazine. Thereafter, she toured as an actress with The Cambridge University Repertory, performing at The Edinburgh Festival. She has been privileged to work as an actress and voice-over artist in Chicago, London, New York, Los Angeles, and in U.S. regional theatre. She is a 40-year member of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Screen Actor’s Guild, and Actor’s Equity Association, a Chicago theatre Joseph Jefferson Award Best Actress nominee, and a recent nominee for Best Actress in Charleston, South Carolina.
In Los Angeles, she was a right hand to one of the most successful literary agents in Hollywood history, Evarts Zeigler, representing a roster of writers and directors including Terrence Malick, Robert Towne, Larry Gelbart, and Joan Didion. As a screenwriter, her television project, “Norman Rockwell’s Willie Gillis: The Series” partnered The Curtis Publishing Company (The Saturday Evening Post) and The Norman Rockwell Licensing Company (w/ Creative Artists Agency) and continues its development.
In 1997, after The Graupners went bi-coastal with a move to Connecticut to raise their kids, Carolyn’s original musical production, Greek to Me! generated 25K+ in funds for arts education programs and high accolades from the CT Department of Ed. The show designated Easton’s a Higher Order Thinking school, earning it another 50K of state arts integration funding. Kennedy then certified as an English/Language Arts Educator through the CT Alternate Route to Certification Program. For Sacred Heart University, she created and directed the theatre curriculum for Connecticut’s Federally-sponsored UPWARD BOUND program, and the Easton public schools. She is a co-founder of the Easton, CT, Arts Council. In 1999, she joined the faculty of Hamden Hall Country Day School and, there, taught writing composition and English in CT throughout five grade levels for a decade until her kids left for college.
Concurrent to her career in education, Kennedy, in the role of Executive Producer/ Co-Director created The Manhattan Producers’ Club and staged 18+ theatrical productions (featuring a new play series that included her original drama, Death of a Butterfly, in collaboration with J.R. Weatherford) in New York City. Throughout, she continued working as a script consultant, writing coach, director and acting teacher. Subsequently in Austin, TX, Peter and Carolyn launched The Austin Producers’ Club designed to teach Texas colleagues in entertainment how to expand their career options by becoming “hyphenates”.
Peter Exec-Produced the premiere of the team’s original 1940’s-inspired musical comedy, The Liberty Belles, in partnership with The Scottish Rite Theatre, Austin’s most historic landmark theatre. The Liberty Belles earned AUSTIN MONTHLY’s Pick of the Month and Week in June, 2014. Thanks to critical acclaim, The Senate of Texas issued Proclamation 930 honoring the production’s contribution to the arts. Meantime, Carolyn was an active member of Austin’s ScriptWorks, which premiered several of her short plays, including The Green Room and Acceptable Incompatibilities during its Out of Ink Festivals in 2013-2015.
The Graupners relocated to Charleston and, in 2019, Carolyn returned to the stage for South of Broadway’s Lowcountry premiere of Albee’s Three Tall Women, portraying the lead role, “Woman A”. Carolyn was tapped to play the Gullah-Geechee “Cassie” in Moore’s local project-in-development, The Cigar Factory. She then joined Footlights Players as “Linda Loman” in their revival of Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which became the highest grossing production of the decade. Later in 2018, for Footlights, Carolyn directed the revival of the hit comic classic, Born Yesterday. 2019 launched with Carolyn playing “Ouisa” in Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, completing its run before the Charleston Arts Community was shuttered by the pandemic.