THE KEN LUDWIG SCHOLARSHIP

Supported by a generous donation by award-winning playwright Ken Ludwig, the author of comic hits including Crazy for You and Lend Me a Tenor, this scholarship is based on a student playwright’s body of work.  Writers submit a resume of their work, a nominating letter from a faculty sponsor, three scripts (one of which must be at least sixty minutes in length) and a cover sheet for each play.

The deadline for submission for this scholarship is February 1, 2011.  All materials should be sent to the artistic director of the Kennedy Center (ghenry@kennedy-center.org) in PDF format.

Writers must be a current undergraduate or within two years after graduation with an undergraduate degree.  Writers must be planning to attend a college or university theatre or writing program in the 2011-2012 academic year.

The individual must represent a school that has a KCACTF associate or participating entry in the 2010 Festival Year.

KEN LUDWIG is an internationally acclaimed playwright who has had a number of hits on Broadway, in London and throughout the world.  He has won the Laurence Olivier Award, in addition to three Tony Award nominations and two Helen Hayes Awards.  His work has been performed in over 25 countries in some 20 languages.  His musical Crazy For You ran for over four years on Broadway and London, and his play Lend Me A Tenor, which was revived on Broadway this season, was called “one of the two great farces by a living writer” by The New York Times.  He was commissioned by The Royal Shakespeare Company to write Shakespeare in Hollywood and he co-wrote an adaptation of The Beaux’ Stratagem with Thornton Wilder at the request of the Wilder Estate.  His play Moon Over Buffalo was produced on Broadway and at the Old Vic in London, and his adaptation of Treasure Island was produced at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket and won the 2009 AATE Distinguished Play Award for Best Adaptation.  Other Broadway plays and musicals include Twentieth Century and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  His newest play, A Fox On The Fairway, will have its world premiere production at the tony Award-winning Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia in October 2010. Over the years his shows have starred, among others, Carol Burnett, Lynn Redgrave, Alec Baldwin, Mickey Rooney, Anne Heche, Joan Collins, Robert Goulet, Frank Langella, Tony Shaloub, Hal Holbrook, Dixie Carter and Otto Schenck.  He studied music at Harvard with Leonard Bernstein and theatre history at Cambridge University in England.