EM Lewis
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Playwright
EM Lewis’ work has been read and produced around the country. Her newest play, SONG OF EXTINCTION, was a finalist for the 2008 Sundance Theater Lab. It is also a finalist for the HotCity Theater's Greenhouse Festival (reading in June), and was featured in NYU's hotINK International Festival of New Plays in January, sponsored by Atlantic Theater.

In 2007, Lewis was selected as one of twelve Los Angeles theater artists to watch by LA Stage Magazine as two of her full-length plays received their world premieres. HEADS – a hostage drama set against the war in Iraq – played at the Blank Theater in Los Angeles in August/September 2007. It was Critics' Pick in the LA Times, and they named it one of the top ten productions of 2007 at the end of the year. Deborah Klugman, in LA Weekly, said "...the question of who we are beneath our posturing lands with such force, it jangles the nerves long after the play has ended." Edward Albee called the play "provocative and wonderfully threatening" when it was read at the Great Plains Theater Conference. INFINITE BLACK SUITCASE – a large ensemble piece about grief and survival, set in rural Oregon – premiered at the Lillian Theater, put up by TheSpyAnts, in April/May 2007. After seeing that production, Variety's Julio Martinez said that "Lewis gives evidence of being a significant talent to watch." Also in 2007, Lewis won Coe College's New Works for the Stage Competition for HEADS, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County's IN10 Competition (honoring short plays that create strong roles for young women) for THE EDGE OF ROSS ISLAND.

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.

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HEADS makes LA Times "Best of 2007" List!

SONG OF EXTINCTION a finalist for the 2008 Sundance Theater Lab!

June 5-7: THIS ISN'T ABOUT LOVE in The Motel Chronicles at Glendale Community College Studio Theater -- Glendale, CA

June 26 - July 27: LEND ME A MENTOR in Missed Opportunity Productions' One-Act Play Festival -- Shanghai, China

June 27-29: SONG OF EXTINCTION -- Finalist/Reading in the 2008 HotCity New Play Festival -- St. Louis, MO

Ongoing: THE WAR PLAYS PROJECT
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The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions
which have been hidden by the answers.

-James Baldwin