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Ken Urban

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Ken Urban is a playwright, screenwriter, director and musician whose plays have been produced across the country and in the UK. He became a senior lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2017, MIT, leading the playwriting program at the school. Urban was born in New Jersey in 1974.

During the 2017-18 Season, Urban has two world premieres: A Guide for the Homesick, which ran at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston (directed by Colman Domingo) from October 6 to November 4, 2017;[1] and The Remains, which receives its world premiere at Studio Theatre in Washington, DC (directed by Artistic Director David Muse) from May 16 to June 17, 2018.[2]

The Boston Globe called Guide, "an absorbing tale of conscience and connection," and "a probing, multilayered study of guilt," singling out the performance of actor McKinley Belcher III as "one of the most searing performances in recent memory on a local stage."[3]]

The website TheaterMania.com called Guide "A theatrical tour de force.'" [4]. WBUR-FM, on its ARTery blog, found Guide to be "radiant and searing," "sizzling with erotic energy," and "flawless." [5]

Plays

Ken Urban's plays include Sense of an Ending, The Correspondent, A Future Perfect, The Awake, The Happy Sad and Nibbler, which was produced off-Broadway February 23 to March 18, 2017 by The Amoralists.[6]

Urban’s work has also been produced by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, 59E59 Theatres, The Summer Play Festival at The Public Theater, and Studio 42 (all New York), Theatre503 in London, First Floor Theater in Chicago, and SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston. His plays have been developed at Playwrights Horizons and The Civilians’ R&D Group (both New York), Donmar Warehouse (London), Huntington Theatre Company (Boston), Williamstown Theatre Festival (Williamstown, Mass.), and the Theatre @ Boston Court (Pasadena, Calif.).

He is a Resident Playwright at New Dramatists and an Affiliated Writer at the Playwrights’ Center. He was the Founding Artistic Director of The Committee, a New York-based theatre company that produced “catastrophic theatre" including the first workshop production of Sarah Kane's Cleansed.

TV and Film

Urban’s TV pilot The Art of Listening recently was optioned by ITV Studios America and Christina Wayne/Assembly Entertainment. He wrote the screenplay for the feature-film adaptation of his play The Happy Sad, which screened internationally at more than 25 film festivals.

Awards/Recognition

In 2009, Urban won the 2008 L. Arnold Weissberger Award, given each year by the Williamstown Theatre Festival, for his play Sense of an Ending. His other awards and recognitions have come from New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Huntington Theater Playwriting Fellowship, MacDowell Colony Fellowships, Headlands Artist Residency, Djerassi Artist Residency, Dramatist Guild Fellowship, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship.

Publishing and Writing

Ken Urban’s plays are published by Dramatists Play Service in the United States (which published Nibbler in fall 2017), and by Methuen in the United Kingdom and Europe. Several have been featured in numerous monologue anthologies.

His essays on theater have appeared in Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights, Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights, Contemporary Theatre Review, Modern Drama, A Concise Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Drama, Cool Britannia: British Political Drama in the 1990s, and PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art.

Education and Teaching

Urban is a graduate of Bucknell University (B.A.) and Rutgers University, where he holds a Ph.D. in English literature, Urban has taught playwriting, screenwriting, academic writing and dramatic literature at those institutions, as well as Harvard University, Princeton University, Tufts University and Davidson College.

He became a senior lecturer at MIT in fall 2017, where he leads the playwriting program at the school.[7]

In 2016 he was McGee Visiting Professor of Playwriting at Davidson College in Davidson, N.C.[8]

Music

Urban plays in the band Occurrence, which features vocalists Cat Hollyer and Johnny Hager. The band released The Time of Year, [9]on December 8, 2017, in time for the 2017 holiday season. The Boston Globe and news radio WBZ (AM) covered its release, with the Globe calling it "a downbeat take on the holiday."[10] Its 2016 release "The Past Will Last Forever" received strong reviews including from Atwood Magazine and Clicky Clicky Music. Occurrence is preparing for the release of its sixth album in 2018.

References

  1. ^ Boston Globe story on Huntington season
  2. ^ Washington Post story on Studio Theater season
  3. ^ [https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater/dance/2017/10/18/guide-for-homesick-absorbing-tale-conscience-and-connection/AW7fATQBZYsiaoI097Um3N/story.html
  4. ^ [1]
  5. ^ [2]
  6. ^ New York Times review
  7. ^ Boston Globe story on MIT appointment
  8. ^ Davidson College catalogue
  9. ^ [3]
  10. ^ [4]
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