Welcome to My New Blog

I plan to use this space to keep in touch with you, post information on recent and upcoming projects—including your productions of my plays—and share recommendations and general musings. I love hearing from you, so if you have questions you'd like me to answer, or things you'd like me to discuss in this blog, please send them along through the "Ask Ken a Question" link on the homepage or in the box on the right.

Latest news: I just finished a new comedy, entitled A Fox On The Fairway. It’s about golf and sex. I love golf. I’m terrible at it and only get to play about five times a year. I have no comment about sex.

The play opens as underdog Quail Valley Country Club prepares to take on arch-rival Crouching Squirrel in this year’s Annual Inter-Club Golf Tournament. With a sizable wager at stake, the contest plays out amidst three love affairs, a disappearing diamond, objectionable sweaters and an exploding Ming vase.

Fox, as I now call it, is a six-character comedy in the style of Lend Me A Tenor. I wrote it as a tribute to the great English farces of the 1930s and 40s like See How They Run and When We Are Married that I love so much. I felt moved to write it as an antidote to the times we live in, to try and move the ball a trifle closer to the sanity and good fellowship we all deserve.

The first reading of the play was last week at Signature Theatre (right) in Arlington, Virginia. (They won the 2009 Regional Theatre Tony Award.) Eric Schaeffer, the Artistic Director of Signature, graciously gave me 29 hours of rehearsal and performance time in their main stage space, and the performance was last Thursday night to a packed house.

John Rando (who helmed the world premiere of my play Be My Baby at the Alley Theatre a couple of years ago) came down from New York to direct, and Signature’s associate director, Michael Baron, helped me assemble a cast of wonderful actors, including Holly Twyford (left), Chris Bloch, Valerie Leonard, Margo Seibert, Cody Nickell & Sam Ludwig. Kerry Epstien was our intrepid stage manager, Patrick Jaffke was her assistant, Will Lurie read the stage directions and Matt Rowe did the sound. Many thanks to everyone involved. The staff at the Signature is beyond compare.

It was a riotously fun evening and turned out to be a terrific way to launch the play. Everyone seemed to love it (knock wood) and I’m about to put a few finishing touches on it and launch it out into the world.

Back to work now. Please let me know what you think of my having a blog like this. Send me questions and I’ll write more soon. Many thanks.