President & Founding Artistic Director

Kim Bent

A native of Braintree, Vermont, Kim is the founder, president, and Artistic Director of Lost Nation Theater.

He was a member of The Champlain Shakespeare Festival for several years as an actor and as director of the interns. 

Kim was also part of The Iowa Theater Lab, one of the premiere experimental theater groups in the nation in the mid-70’s, performing throughout the United States and Europe.
He has worked with Anne Bogart, Whoopie Goldberg, and John O’Keefe.  Kim has been part of the theater faculty at Middlebury College, Goddard College, New York University and Long Island University.

Kim is an actor, director, (award-winning) playwright, teacher, and scenic/lighting designer and technician.
Favorite LNT roles include:

portraying - "Mark Rothko" in Red, "Prospero" in The Tempest, “André” in My Dinner With André, “DiDi” in Waiting for Godot, “Arthur” in On Tidy Endings, “John” in The Subject Was Roses, “Sir Andrew Aguecheek” in Twelfth Night, “Bottom” in Midsummer Night’s Dream, and his solo Gunslinger by Ed Dorn. 

directing David Budbill's Judevine, The Tempest, Molly Sweeney, Romeo & Juliet, One Shoe Off, Waiting for Godot, The Mysteries and What’s So Funny?, and developing new work such as (his own) Stone and Katherine Paterson's LYDDIE, as well as News of the City/Talk of the Town, Panther Classics, Snow, and many others.

writing/adapting: STONE (a celebration of the Barre Granite Community, winner of the inaugural Hathaway Prize); Katherine Paterson's LYDDIE, Howard Frank Mosher's Disappearances, Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.

Kim is a proud sixth-generation Vermonter, raised on a dairy farm in Braintree.
Why does he do theater: "Because it's the only thing that makes sense of the world!"

Kim studied theater at the University of Vermont (BA), Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and Long Island University (MA). He is a juried artist on the Vermont Arts Council’s Artist Register.