Artistic Statement
I am a writer of dramatic literature whose work is marked by spiritual hunger, carnal humor, formal ingenuity and a collaborative spirit.
I am one of five co-producing artistic directors of Rude Mechs, a theatre collective based in Austin, TX. The Rude Mechs have been central to the renewed interest in devised work taking place in the American Theatre. Devised work, simply put, places the initial creative focus on how a work is made. I have made works with Rude Mechs by traveling to South America and interviewing real artists about a fictional guru, encouraging actors to make live confessions about their spending habits, and mining out of print high school theatre textbooks to collect their worst advice.
My work with the Rudes is only a portion of my artistic output. Outside of the Rude Mechs work, I was commissioned by the Foundry Theatre in 2010 to compose a play made entirely of questions posed to the audience about their values. Entitled HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH, the play was published in 2011 in Theatre along with an essay I wrote entitled, “Questions and Prayers.”
Formal ingenuity can be found throughout my work driving my dramatic writing outside the strict limits of the theatre. In 2015 my first novel, RULES FOR WEREWOLVES was released in the US and the UK by Melville House to great acclaim. The story is told almost entirely in dialog taking place among disaffected youth squatting unlawfully during the housing crisis of the late 2000s. This prose work in dialog is directly related to my theatrical work. I am now in conversation with Temple-Hill Entertainment to create a film based on the novel.
Writing screenplays and television scripts is a new passion of mine. In addition to adapting my novel for the screen, I developed a pilot with Sarah Jessica Parker’s production company, Pretty Matches, entitled LET US PRAY. And I continue to work with Manage-Ment, to create original pilots.
My fascination with spirituality and family life has long been a subject for my playwriting. In 2015 my play, YOUR MOTHER’S COPY OF THE KAMA SUTRA was produced by Playwrights Horizons in New York City. The play tells the story of a couple who attempts to recreate their sexual history with one another before they are married. It is a funny and heartbreaking tale of sexual abuse and recovery, but at its core is a deep spiritual longing of a couple to be known by one another.
Playwrights Horizons has since commissioned a new play from me, MY HEART IS A LIBRARY, YOURS IS A MUSEUM to further investigate spiritual longing across generations. This play tells the story of a young girl who goes away, to what her parents think is a horse camp while they deal with the girl’s elderly grandmother’s end-of-life care. When the girl comes home a born-again Christian, the parents attempt to convert her back to the liberal agnosticism that has been the family’s traditional stance. A first developmental reading of this play was held on August 30th in NYC.
Also this year, in November, the third installment in my ongoing series, FIXING SHAKESPEARE, will receive a developmental reading. FIXING TROILUS AND CRESSIDA will follow the same pattern as FIXING KING JOHN and FIXING TIMON OF ATHENS, namely: take one of Shakespeare’s least produced plays, rewrite it word for word in contemporary English. The desire is to renew and restore interest in Shakespeare’s full canon, as well has giving audiences a hint of what the plays may have sounded like in their day, when the language was fresh and brash.
The FIXING SHAKESPEARE series has been rewarding. Fixing King John won the best original script from the B. Iden Payne awards in Austin, has been read and produced around the US (including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival), and has now been translated into Spanish as GRANDE/BRAVO and will be read at two Universities in Columbia in the Fall of 2016 (Universidad Javeriana and Universidad del Valle).
I am also working on series of plays that require no set, no actors, no theatre and no anything. “The Replacement Tapes,” is currently on tour, which means you get a box with a tape recorder and headphones and after gathering eight friends, you can create a play simply by following the tapes instructions. In Christmas of 2017 the Rudes will premiere “A Karaoke Christmas Carol,” which works by the same principal, audiences follow simple instructions by headphones and invite three ghosts into their presence.
I also have a solo show, “The Cold Record,” which tells the story of a twelve year old boy who tries to set the record for the most days coming home from school with a fever and in the process falls in love with the school nurse and breaks his own heart on the punk rock. “The Cold Record” premieres at Fusebox 2018.
I am also currently working on a new commission for Seattle Children’s Theatre entitled, “The Lamp is the Moon,” about a girl who hates naps and wants to be an astronaut now. In 2018 a new play will premiere at UT about Leonard Bernstein, celebrating his centenary, a commission from UT Austin College of Fine Arts, Department of Theatre and Dance and Texas Performing Arts; it is currently titled, “A Plan and Not Quite Enough Time.”
And I am at work on a new novel, The Vow, about man who takes a vow of silence on a whim, without first talking to his wife or employer and as the man finds a greater sense of inner peace, his life falls apart around him.
I am one of five co-producing artistic directors of Rude Mechs, a theatre collective based in Austin, TX. The Rude Mechs have been central to the renewed interest in devised work taking place in the American Theatre. Devised work, simply put, places the initial creative focus on how a work is made. I have made works with Rude Mechs by traveling to South America and interviewing real artists about a fictional guru, encouraging actors to make live confessions about their spending habits, and mining out of print high school theatre textbooks to collect their worst advice.
My work with the Rudes is only a portion of my artistic output. Outside of the Rude Mechs work, I was commissioned by the Foundry Theatre in 2010 to compose a play made entirely of questions posed to the audience about their values. Entitled HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH, the play was published in 2011 in Theatre along with an essay I wrote entitled, “Questions and Prayers.”
Formal ingenuity can be found throughout my work driving my dramatic writing outside the strict limits of the theatre. In 2015 my first novel, RULES FOR WEREWOLVES was released in the US and the UK by Melville House to great acclaim. The story is told almost entirely in dialog taking place among disaffected youth squatting unlawfully during the housing crisis of the late 2000s. This prose work in dialog is directly related to my theatrical work. I am now in conversation with Temple-Hill Entertainment to create a film based on the novel.
Writing screenplays and television scripts is a new passion of mine. In addition to adapting my novel for the screen, I developed a pilot with Sarah Jessica Parker’s production company, Pretty Matches, entitled LET US PRAY. And I continue to work with Manage-Ment, to create original pilots.
My fascination with spirituality and family life has long been a subject for my playwriting. In 2015 my play, YOUR MOTHER’S COPY OF THE KAMA SUTRA was produced by Playwrights Horizons in New York City. The play tells the story of a couple who attempts to recreate their sexual history with one another before they are married. It is a funny and heartbreaking tale of sexual abuse and recovery, but at its core is a deep spiritual longing of a couple to be known by one another.
Playwrights Horizons has since commissioned a new play from me, MY HEART IS A LIBRARY, YOURS IS A MUSEUM to further investigate spiritual longing across generations. This play tells the story of a young girl who goes away, to what her parents think is a horse camp while they deal with the girl’s elderly grandmother’s end-of-life care. When the girl comes home a born-again Christian, the parents attempt to convert her back to the liberal agnosticism that has been the family’s traditional stance. A first developmental reading of this play was held on August 30th in NYC.
Also this year, in November, the third installment in my ongoing series, FIXING SHAKESPEARE, will receive a developmental reading. FIXING TROILUS AND CRESSIDA will follow the same pattern as FIXING KING JOHN and FIXING TIMON OF ATHENS, namely: take one of Shakespeare’s least produced plays, rewrite it word for word in contemporary English. The desire is to renew and restore interest in Shakespeare’s full canon, as well has giving audiences a hint of what the plays may have sounded like in their day, when the language was fresh and brash.
The FIXING SHAKESPEARE series has been rewarding. Fixing King John won the best original script from the B. Iden Payne awards in Austin, has been read and produced around the US (including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival), and has now been translated into Spanish as GRANDE/BRAVO and will be read at two Universities in Columbia in the Fall of 2016 (Universidad Javeriana and Universidad del Valle).
I am also working on series of plays that require no set, no actors, no theatre and no anything. “The Replacement Tapes,” is currently on tour, which means you get a box with a tape recorder and headphones and after gathering eight friends, you can create a play simply by following the tapes instructions. In Christmas of 2017 the Rudes will premiere “A Karaoke Christmas Carol,” which works by the same principal, audiences follow simple instructions by headphones and invite three ghosts into their presence.
I also have a solo show, “The Cold Record,” which tells the story of a twelve year old boy who tries to set the record for the most days coming home from school with a fever and in the process falls in love with the school nurse and breaks his own heart on the punk rock. “The Cold Record” premieres at Fusebox 2018.
I am also currently working on a new commission for Seattle Children’s Theatre entitled, “The Lamp is the Moon,” about a girl who hates naps and wants to be an astronaut now. In 2018 a new play will premiere at UT about Leonard Bernstein, celebrating his centenary, a commission from UT Austin College of Fine Arts, Department of Theatre and Dance and Texas Performing Arts; it is currently titled, “A Plan and Not Quite Enough Time.”
And I am at work on a new novel, The Vow, about man who takes a vow of silence on a whim, without first talking to his wife or employer and as the man finds a greater sense of inner peace, his life falls apart around him.
←
Kirk Lynn
Artistic Statement
I am a writer of dramatic literature whose work is marked by spiritual hunger, carnal humor, formal ingenuity and a collaborative spirit.
I am one of five co-producing artistic directors of Rude Mechs, a theatre collective based in Austin, TX. The Rude Mechs have been central to the renewed interest in devised work taking place in the American Theatre. Devised work, simply put, places the initial creative focus on how a work is made. I have made works with Rude Mechs by traveling to South America and interviewing real artists about a fictional guru, encouraging actors to make live confessions about their spending habits, and mining out of print high school theatre textbooks to collect their worst advice.
My work with the Rudes is only a portion of my artistic output. Outside of the Rude Mechs work, I was commissioned by the Foundry Theatre in 2010 to compose a play made entirely of questions posed to the audience about their values. Entitled HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH, the play was published in 2011 in Theatre along with an essay I wrote entitled, “Questions and Prayers.”
Formal ingenuity can be found throughout my work driving my dramatic writing outside the strict limits of the theatre. In 2015 my first novel, RULES FOR WEREWOLVES was released in the US and the UK by Melville House to great acclaim. The story is told almost entirely in dialog taking place among disaffected youth squatting unlawfully during the housing crisis of the late 2000s. This prose work in dialog is directly related to my theatrical work. I am now in conversation with Temple-Hill Entertainment to create a film based on the novel.
Writing screenplays and television scripts is a new passion of mine. In addition to adapting my novel for the screen, I developed a pilot with Sarah Jessica Parker’s production company, Pretty Matches, entitled LET US PRAY. And I continue to work with Manage-Ment, to create original pilots.
My fascination with spirituality and family life has long been a subject for my playwriting. In 2015 my play, YOUR MOTHER’S COPY OF THE KAMA SUTRA was produced by Playwrights Horizons in New York City. The play tells the story of a couple who attempts to recreate their sexual history with one another before they are married. It is a funny and heartbreaking tale of sexual abuse and recovery, but at its core is a deep spiritual longing of a couple to be known by one another.
Playwrights Horizons has since commissioned a new play from me, MY HEART IS A LIBRARY, YOURS IS A MUSEUM to further investigate spiritual longing across generations. This play tells the story of a young girl who goes away, to what her parents think is a horse camp while they deal with the girl’s elderly grandmother’s end-of-life care. When the girl comes home a born-again Christian, the parents attempt to convert her back to the liberal agnosticism that has been the family’s traditional stance. A first developmental reading of this play was held on August 30th in NYC.
Also this year, in November, the third installment in my ongoing series, FIXING SHAKESPEARE, will receive a developmental reading. FIXING TROILUS AND CRESSIDA will follow the same pattern as FIXING KING JOHN and FIXING TIMON OF ATHENS, namely: take one of Shakespeare’s least produced plays, rewrite it word for word in contemporary English. The desire is to renew and restore interest in Shakespeare’s full canon, as well has giving audiences a hint of what the plays may have sounded like in their day, when the language was fresh and brash.
The FIXING SHAKESPEARE series has been rewarding. Fixing King John won the best original script from the B. Iden Payne awards in Austin, has been read and produced around the US (including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival), and has now been translated into Spanish as GRANDE/BRAVO and will be read at two Universities in Columbia in the Fall of 2016 (Universidad Javeriana and Universidad del Valle).
I am also working on series of plays that require no set, no actors, no theatre and no anything. “The Replacement Tapes,” is currently on tour, which means you get a box with a tape recorder and headphones and after gathering eight friends, you can create a play simply by following the tapes instructions. In Christmas of 2017 the Rudes will premiere “A Karaoke Christmas Carol,” which works by the same principal, audiences follow simple instructions by headphones and invite three ghosts into their presence.
I also have a solo show, “The Cold Record,” which tells the story of a twelve year old boy who tries to set the record for the most days coming home from school with a fever and in the process falls in love with the school nurse and breaks his own heart on the punk rock. “The Cold Record” premieres at Fusebox 2018.
I am also currently working on a new commission for Seattle Children’s Theatre entitled, “The Lamp is the Moon,” about a girl who hates naps and wants to be an astronaut now. In 2018 a new play will premiere at UT about Leonard Bernstein, celebrating his centenary, a commission from UT Austin College of Fine Arts, Department of Theatre and Dance and Texas Performing Arts; it is currently titled, “A Plan and Not Quite Enough Time.”
And I am at work on a new novel, The Vow, about man who takes a vow of silence on a whim, without first talking to his wife or employer and as the man finds a greater sense of inner peace, his life falls apart around him.
I am one of five co-producing artistic directors of Rude Mechs, a theatre collective based in Austin, TX. The Rude Mechs have been central to the renewed interest in devised work taking place in the American Theatre. Devised work, simply put, places the initial creative focus on how a work is made. I have made works with Rude Mechs by traveling to South America and interviewing real artists about a fictional guru, encouraging actors to make live confessions about their spending habits, and mining out of print high school theatre textbooks to collect their worst advice.
My work with the Rudes is only a portion of my artistic output. Outside of the Rude Mechs work, I was commissioned by the Foundry Theatre in 2010 to compose a play made entirely of questions posed to the audience about their values. Entitled HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH, the play was published in 2011 in Theatre along with an essay I wrote entitled, “Questions and Prayers.”
Formal ingenuity can be found throughout my work driving my dramatic writing outside the strict limits of the theatre. In 2015 my first novel, RULES FOR WEREWOLVES was released in the US and the UK by Melville House to great acclaim. The story is told almost entirely in dialog taking place among disaffected youth squatting unlawfully during the housing crisis of the late 2000s. This prose work in dialog is directly related to my theatrical work. I am now in conversation with Temple-Hill Entertainment to create a film based on the novel.
Writing screenplays and television scripts is a new passion of mine. In addition to adapting my novel for the screen, I developed a pilot with Sarah Jessica Parker’s production company, Pretty Matches, entitled LET US PRAY. And I continue to work with Manage-Ment, to create original pilots.
My fascination with spirituality and family life has long been a subject for my playwriting. In 2015 my play, YOUR MOTHER’S COPY OF THE KAMA SUTRA was produced by Playwrights Horizons in New York City. The play tells the story of a couple who attempts to recreate their sexual history with one another before they are married. It is a funny and heartbreaking tale of sexual abuse and recovery, but at its core is a deep spiritual longing of a couple to be known by one another.
Playwrights Horizons has since commissioned a new play from me, MY HEART IS A LIBRARY, YOURS IS A MUSEUM to further investigate spiritual longing across generations. This play tells the story of a young girl who goes away, to what her parents think is a horse camp while they deal with the girl’s elderly grandmother’s end-of-life care. When the girl comes home a born-again Christian, the parents attempt to convert her back to the liberal agnosticism that has been the family’s traditional stance. A first developmental reading of this play was held on August 30th in NYC.
Also this year, in November, the third installment in my ongoing series, FIXING SHAKESPEARE, will receive a developmental reading. FIXING TROILUS AND CRESSIDA will follow the same pattern as FIXING KING JOHN and FIXING TIMON OF ATHENS, namely: take one of Shakespeare’s least produced plays, rewrite it word for word in contemporary English. The desire is to renew and restore interest in Shakespeare’s full canon, as well has giving audiences a hint of what the plays may have sounded like in their day, when the language was fresh and brash.
The FIXING SHAKESPEARE series has been rewarding. Fixing King John won the best original script from the B. Iden Payne awards in Austin, has been read and produced around the US (including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival), and has now been translated into Spanish as GRANDE/BRAVO and will be read at two Universities in Columbia in the Fall of 2016 (Universidad Javeriana and Universidad del Valle).
I am also working on series of plays that require no set, no actors, no theatre and no anything. “The Replacement Tapes,” is currently on tour, which means you get a box with a tape recorder and headphones and after gathering eight friends, you can create a play simply by following the tapes instructions. In Christmas of 2017 the Rudes will premiere “A Karaoke Christmas Carol,” which works by the same principal, audiences follow simple instructions by headphones and invite three ghosts into their presence.
I also have a solo show, “The Cold Record,” which tells the story of a twelve year old boy who tries to set the record for the most days coming home from school with a fever and in the process falls in love with the school nurse and breaks his own heart on the punk rock. “The Cold Record” premieres at Fusebox 2018.
I am also currently working on a new commission for Seattle Children’s Theatre entitled, “The Lamp is the Moon,” about a girl who hates naps and wants to be an astronaut now. In 2018 a new play will premiere at UT about Leonard Bernstein, celebrating his centenary, a commission from UT Austin College of Fine Arts, Department of Theatre and Dance and Texas Performing Arts; it is currently titled, “A Plan and Not Quite Enough Time.”
And I am at work on a new novel, The Vow, about man who takes a vow of silence on a whim, without first talking to his wife or employer and as the man finds a greater sense of inner peace, his life falls apart around him.