The genesis
of the William Inge Theatre Festival sprang from the
beginnings of the
William Inge Collection.
Even prior to Inge’s death in 1973, ICC began an
“Inge Collection” of clippings and memorabilia. Inge,
an Independence native, ICC alumnus, and Pulitzer
and Academy Award-winning playwright, donated five
original manuscripts.
After the playwright’s death, his sister Helene Inge
Connell carried out Inge’s wish to leave books and
other items to the college library. ICC received
more than 2,000 volumes of books in 1976 and in
1980. Mrs. Connell also donated Inge’s collection of
approximately 600 classical and jazz records.
Mrs. Connell designated
Independence Community College as the archival
depository of Inge’s works and on Oct. 25 of 1981,
the William Inge Collection officially opened to the
public.
During
the preceding week, there was a festival of film
versions of Inge’s plays. For the Collection’s
formal opening, the audience watched a multi-media
production, “William Inge: Penn Avenue to Broadway,”
which was compiled, edited, and produced by ICC
alumnus, Michael Wood.
The next year, ICC hosted the first “William
Inge Festival” on May 3, 1982, which would have
been the playwright’s sixty-ninth birthday. The
Festival program began with a showing of “Penn
Avenue to Broadway and followed by a panel
discussion.
Longtime ICC drama instructor Margaret Goheen
spearheaded a committee to consider other ideas.
They contacted playwright Jerome Lawrence, who was a
friend of Inge, for advice. Lawrence suggested a
theatre festival that focuses on a playwright. Not
surprisingly, Mrs. Goheen asked Lawrence to be the
first playwright Honoree for the 1983 Festival.
Mrs. Goheen set a tone of the Inge Festival’s
continuous growth and prestige. Following her death
in 1990, director Jill Warford continued the
vision. Current Artistic Director Peter Ellenstein
has overseen further expansion since 2001.
Now, the nationally renowned four-day Inge Festival
is the showpiece event of numerous arts activities
sponsored by the William Inge Center for the Arts.
The William Inge Theatre Festival has honored some
of the world’s most prestigious playwrights, all of
whom traveled to Independence to accept the
Festival’s
Distinguished Achievement in American Theatre Award.
Additional awards bestowed at the Festival include
the Otis Guernsey New Voices award honoring a
peer-nominated emerging playwright, the Kansas
Citizen for the Arts Award, recognizing the
artistic achievements of a Kansas native, and the
Margaret Goheen Award
named for the founder of the Festival.
The Inge Center began year-round activity in 2002.
Chief among the newest initiatives is the
Playwrights-in-Residence program.
Accomplished working professionals live in William
Inge’s boyhood home. The residents are provided
time to work on new projects, which receive a
developmental reading and further support.
The Inge Center also conducts the
Playwrights-in-the-Schools program, which
installs creative playwriting in rural public
schools. The Center, in partnership with ICC,
operates the Professional Playwriting
Certificate program. It also hosts periodic
Guest Artists
presentations, providing instruction to the general
public; arts training programs for artists and
classroom instructors; scholarships, and additional
services for theare artists-in-training.
With the cooperation of Tina Fallon and the
24-Hour Company in New York, the Inge Center
produces three versions of the
24-Hour Plays
annually: One for regional high school students, one
for Regional college students and one for the
Independence community.
The Inge Center
provides scholarships for aspiring young playwrights
and theatre students, often through partnerships
with other organizations, such as the
Kennedy
Center/American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF),
Educational Theatre Association
(Thespians), and many others. The Inge Center
often acts as a link between educational
institutions and the professional theatre world.
For the past twenty
years, under the direction of
Mike Wood, the
Inge Center has amassed a considerable video archive
of interviews with playwrights, actors, directors,
producers and other theatre professionals. Using
this extensive archive the Inge Center has created a
video on the craft of playwriting,
"The Drama of
Creation: Writers on Writing," featuring many of
America's greatest playwrights. This video is
available for purchase on our website.
This year the Inge Center has launched a free Streaming
Video Website making portions of the
interviews with all of our honorees available
on-line for researchers, students, teachers and the
general public. There is nothing else like it
available anywhere in the world.
With continued and growing support from local,
regional, and national patrons and funders, not to
mention the remarkable support from the William Inge
Festival Foundation and Independence Community
College, the William Inge Center for the Arts looks
forward to another quarter century of quality arts
programming.
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