EM Lewis and Ken Urban
are the Fall 2011 William Inge Center for the Arts
Playwrights-in-Residence
Two playwrights, with productions at prestigious venues such as the Guthrie Theatre of Minneapolis to the Donmar Warehouse of London, are the Fall 2011 Inge House Playwrights-in-Residence, for the William Inge Center for the Arts at Independence Community College.
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Playwrights EM Lewis and Ken Urban will live at the historic William Inge Boyhood Home in Independence, Kansas. They will work on new scripts, which will each have a professional play development reading. The readings will take place Saturday, Nov. 5, at the William Inge Theatre, at 2:00 and 7:30 p.m. The readings feature professional guest actors and students of ICC. Admission is free. Major funding for this program is provided by The National Endowment for the Arts, which believes a great country should have great art.
EM Lewis was the 2010-2011 Hodder Fellow in Playwriting at Princeton University. She won the 2009 Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for Song of Extinction and the 2008 Francesca Primus Prize honoring an emerging woman theater artist for Heads, both from the American Theater Critics Association. Her work has been produced around the world, and published by Samuel French.
Recent productions include Song of Extinction at the Guthrie, The War Museum in Flux Theater's New World Iliads in New York, Strong Voice in the Alcyone Festival in Chicago, and Drop-Off Day in the Radar Festival in Los Angeles. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild.
Lewis grew up on a farm in Oregon, spent a number of years in Los Angeles, and is now living in Princeton, New Jersey, working on a play called Magellanica: A New and Accurate Map of the World. You can visit her website at www.emlewisplaywright.com
Ken Urban is a playwright and director. His plays have been produced and developed at Summer Play Festival @ The Public Theatre, Donmar Warehouse (London), Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, The Flea, The Chocolate Factory (NYC), Williamstown Theatre Festival, Playwrights Horizons, Irish Rep, New York Theatre Workshop, The Lark, The Huntington, Moving Arts, Theatre of NOTE, and Soho Rep. His plays include I (HEART) KANT, The Private Lives of Eskimos, The Correspondent, Sense of an Ending, The Happy Sad, The Awake and Nibbler.
He is the winner of the 2008 Weissberger Playwriting Award for his play Sense of an Ending. Other awards include the 2007-9 Huntington Playwriting Fellowship, the 2010-11 Dramatist Guild Fellowship, the 2011 Lark Romania Exchange, the 2009 Writers' Room of Boston Emerging Writers Fellowship, two MacDowell Colony Fellowships (Summer 2008, Summer 2009) and a 2006 Tennessee Williams Fellowship.
His plays are featured in the anthologies Plays and Playwrights 2002 and New York Theatre Review as well as numerous monologue collections. Urban has directed plays by Harold Pinter, Tennessee Williams and Sarah Kane in addition to his own work. His screenplay adaptation of The Happy Sad began primary shooting in July 2011, directed by Rodney Evans (Brother to Brother). Urban has also written extensively on British and American theatre. He makes electronic music as Occurrence and released the Lonesome Animals album in 2010. He teaches at Harvard University.
The Inge Center at ICC sponsors the annual William Inge Theatre Festival, the Official Theater Festival of the State of Kansas. The 31st annual festival will be held April 18-21, 2012. Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang will be present all four days as the guest Honoree.
The Inge Center is named for the late William Inge, a native of Independence and Pulitzer and Oscar-winning playwright and screenwriter.
The William Inge Center for the Arts is a participant in the New Generations Program, funded by Doris Duke Charitable Foundation/The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for the American theatre.
Further major supporters of the William Inge Center for the Arts include the William Inge Festival Foundation, and Independence Community College.
For more information, visit www.ingecenter.org or call (620) 332-5492.
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Spring 2011 Inge House Playwrights-in-Residence were
Carson Grace Becker and Adrienne Thompson
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Fall 2010 Inge House Playwrights-in-Residence were
Lynne Kaufman and Adam Szymkowicz
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Spring 2010 Inge House Playwrights-in-Residence were
Chisa Hutchinson of New York and David Rush of Chicago
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Fall 2009 Inge House Playwrights-in-Residence were
Sean Lewis of New York and Philip Dawkins of Chicago
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Spring 2009 Inge House Playwrights-in-Residence were
Richard Hellesen of Sacramento and Arlene Hutton of New York
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Fall 2008 Inge House Playwrights-in-Residence were
Patricia Loughrey of San Diego and Kristin Palmer of New York
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Spring 2008 Inge House Playwrights-in-Residence were
Adam Kraar of New York and Alice Tuan of Los Angeles
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Fall 2007 Inge House Playwrights-in-Residence were
Julianne Homokay of Los Angeles and Robert Koon of Chicago
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Spring 2007 Inge House Playwrights-in-Residence were
Sheila Callaghan of New York and Dominic Orlando of Minneapolis
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Fall 2006 Inge Playwrights were
David Scott Hay of Chicago and Lydia Stryk of Berlin, Germany
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Spring 2006 Inge Playwrights were
Mickey Birnbaum of Los Angeles and Catherine Filloux of New York
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Fall 2005 Inge Playwrights began teaching September 20, 2005
Evan Smith of Savannah, Georgia and Alice Tuan of Los Angeles
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Spring 2005 Inge Playwrights began teaching March 15, 2005
Bryan Davidson of Los Angeles and Lisa Dillman of Chicago
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Fall 2004 Inge House Playwrights began teaching September 2004
Adam Kraar of New York and Caridad Svich of Los Angeles
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Spring 2004 Inge House Playwrights began teaching April 2004
Carson Becker of Chicago and Jeremy Kareken of New York
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Winter 2004 Inge House Playwrights began teaching Jan. 12
Rose Portillo of Los Angeles and Richard Broadhurst of Sacramento
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Fall 2003 Inge House Playwrights began teaching September 4th
Anne Phelan of New York and Elaine Romero of Tucson, Arizona
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Spring 2003 Playwrights were
David Scott Hay of Chicago and Melanie Marnich of Minneapolis
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Fall 2002 Playwrights began teaching in October
Marcia Cebulska of Topeka and Colin Denby Swanson of Texas
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Professional playwrights from across the country will leave their homes to reside in Independence, Kansas, in the historic home of the late playwright, William Inge, as the William Inge Center for the Arts Playwrights-in-Residence. While in residence, the playwrights will teach a playwriting class at Independence Community College and at a local high school. The playwrights will have time to work on their own plays while living in the historic boyhood home of award-winning writer and Independence native, William Inge.
The program is funded in part by the Kansas Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.
For more information on the playwriting course at Independence Community College or the Inge Center Playwrights-in-Residence residency, call (620) 331-7768, or (800) 842-6063, ext. 5835.