EM Lewis – Playwright

EM Lewis won the 2009 Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award from the American Theater Critics Association for her play SONG OF EXTINCTION, which premiered in Los Angeles, produced by Moving Arts at [Inside] the Ford. The play also won the Ashland New Plays Festival, University of Oregon’s EcoDrama Festival, the Ted Schmitt Award for the premiere of an outstanding new play from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, and Production of the Year from the LA Weekly Awards. It was published in Dramatics Magazine, and in an acting edition by Samuel French, in 2010, a year in which the play also had productions at Ion Theater in San Diego and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.  SONG OF EXTINCTION was produced at the Guthrie in Minneapolis, produced by Theater Latte Da, in Spring of 2011.

Lewis also wrote the Iraq War hostage drama HEADS (winner of the 2008 Primus Prize for an emerging woman theater artist, and Best of 2007 from the Los Angeles Times). Her play INFINITE BLACK SUITCASE (about grief and redemption in rural Oregon), was produced by Moving Arts and by TheSpyAnts in Los Angeles.  It was published by Samuel French in 2011.  Her play STRONG VOICE, a modern detective story that explores issues of faith in the wake of 9/11 and riffs upon the work of 10th Century writer Hrosvitha of Gandersheim, premiered at Halcyon Theater in Chicago in 2011, as part of their Alcyone Festival.  In fall of 2011, Lewis was host playwright for the Ashland New Plays Festival in Oregon, worked on a new play during a residency at the William Inge Center for the Arts in Kansas, and was a finalist in HotCity Theater’s Greenhouse Festival in St. Louis, Missouri.  Her play GOODBYE, RUBY TUESDAY will have its world premiere at HotCity Theater in 2012.

Lewis is a member of Moving Arts Theater Company, the Passage Theater playwriting workshop, the Dramatists Guild, the International Centre for Women Playwrights and the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights. She is from Oregon, was in Los Angeles, California for quite a while, and is now living in Princeton, New Jersey.  A 2010-2011 Hodder Fellowship in playwriting at Princeton University allowed her to move to the Garden State (New York adjacent), where she is working to finish two new plays —  a psychological mystery called IF I DID THIS and an Antarctic adventure story called MAGELLANICA: A NEW AND ACCURATE MAP OF THE WORLD.

New in 2012!

In Print:  INFINITE BLACK SUITCASE and SONG OF EXTINCTION are now available from Samuel French!  

New in 2012!

• January 14-21 — “Bohemian. Like You.” in Moving Arts’ production of The Car Plays in the Off-Center Festival at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts — Costa Mesa, CA
• February 10-12 — Workshop, and reading of an excerpt from “If I Did This” at Passage Theater — Trenton, NJ
• February 22-March 4 — “Reveille” in Moving Arts’ production of The Car Plays in the Without Walls Festival at the La Jolla Playhouse — San Diego, CA
• February 24-26 — “Partners” in the Briefs Festival, produced by That Uppity Theater Company and Vital Voice Media — St. Louis, MO
• May — “Magellanica: A New and Accurate Map of the World” reading in PlayFest Santa Barbara – Santa Barbara, CA
• June 23-July 8 — Playwright-in-Residence at “New Voices for the Theater” at the School of the Performing Arts in the Richmond Community (SPARC) — Richmond, VA
• September 7-22 — The World Premiere of “Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday” at HotCity Theater — St. Louis, MO
• Fall — “Heads,” produced by Missouri Valley College — Marshall, MO