EM Lewis
Plays by EM Lewis
About EM Lewis
EM Lewis' work has been read and produced around the country. She was named one of twelve theater artists to watch in LA Stage Magazine in 2007, then went on to win he 2008 Primus Prize for an emerging woman playwright and the 2009 Steinberg Award for best play to premiere outside New York from the American Theater Critics Association. She has been awarded a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University for the 2010-2011 school year.
Song of Extinction -- The world premiere of Lewis' award-winning new play, Song of Extinction, ran from November 7 - December 14th, 2008 at [Inside] the Ford, produced by Moving Arts. The play went on to be named Critics Choice in the LA Times, and to win a host of awards, including the Ashland New Plays Festival, University of Oregon's EcoDrama Festival, the Ted Schmitt Award from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Association for the world premiere of an outstanding new play, Production of the Year from the LA Weekly Awards and the Steinberg Award, which is given to the best play to premiere outside of New York City in a given year. Song of Extinction is now available for purchase from Samuel French.
Lewis' full-length play HEADS - a hostage drama set against the war in Iraq - was read at Pacific Resident Theatre and the Blank Theatre in Los Angeles and at the Boomerang Theater and NYU's hotINK International Festival of New Plays in New York. It is the winner of Coe College's New Works for the Stage Competition, and a semi-finalist for the 2007 O'Neill Playwrights Conference. After a reading at the Great Plains Theater Conference in Omaha, Edward Albee called the play "provocative and wonderfully threatening." It had its world premiere at the Blank Theater in Los Angeles in August/September 2007, directed by Darin Anthony, and featuring Beth Broderick, James Eckhouse, J. Richey Nash and Jeremy Gabriel. It was named one of the top ten productions of the year by the LA Times, and has gone on to further productions in Chicago and Denver.
Infinite Black Suitcase - a large ensemble piece about grief and survival, set in rural Oregon - received a workshop production at Moving Arts in Los Angeles in 2005. The play was a semi-finalist for the 2006 O'Neill Playwrights Conference and a finalist in New York's HBTL �Diverse Voices� Playwriting Contest. The world premiere was produced by TheSpyAnts Theater Company in Los Angeles in April/May 2007.
Lewis is a writer-in-residence at Moving Arts Theatre Company in Los Angeles, CA, and a member of the Dramatists Guild, the International Centre for Women Playwrights and the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights. She lives in Santa Monica, California now - but she is originally from Oregon.
For a complete listing of plays by EM Lewis, visit her webpage:
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