Ken Ludwig

Ken Ludwig is an American playwright and theatre director.

Born in York, Pennsylvania, Ludwig was educated at the York Suburban Senior High School, York PA Haverford College (Class of 1972), Harvard Law School, and Trinity College at Cambridge University. His first Broadway play, Lend Me a Tenor (1989), garnered him his first Tony Award nomination; his second was for Best Book of a Musical for Crazy for You (1992), which won the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, LA Drama Critics Circle, Helen Hayes, and Laurence Olivier Awards as Best Musical. Other Broadway credits include Moon Over Buffalo (1995) with Carol Burnett and Lynn Redgrave (on Broadway) and Frank Langella and Joan Collins at the Old Vic in London, the book for a musical adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (2001), and a new adaptation of the classic Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur play, Twentieth Century (2004) starring Alec Baldwin and Anne Heche and the revival of Lend Me A Tenor (2010), starring Tony Shalhoub and Justin Bartha.

Among Ludwig’s other works are Shakespeare in Hollywood, which was presented at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., in 2003 and won the Helen Hayes’ Award for Best Play of the Year; Leading Ladies, premiered at Alley Theatre in association with the The Cleveland Play House in 2004; Be My Baby, at the Alley Theatre in 2005, with Hal Holbrook and Dixie Carter; and the completion of Thornton Wilder's adaptation of George Farquhar's Restoration comedy The Beaux’ Stratagem, staged at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., in 2006. Ludwig’s adaptation of The Three Musketeers opened at Bristol Old Vic in England in December 2006.

Ludwig's wrote an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, which premiered at the Alley Theatre in April 2007, played at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket on London's West End in 2008, and won the AATE Distinguished Play Award for Best Adaptation of the Year. Another stage adaptation of the George and Ira Gershwin film An American in Paris, premiered at the Alley Theatre in Houston as "The Gershwins' An American in Paris" in May 2008.

Ludwig’s play, The Fox on the Fairway, a new comedy set in the world of golf, premiered in fall 2010 at Signature Theatre in Arlington, directed by John Rando.

The Game's Afoot is Ludwig’s comedy-mystery about the great actor William Gillette who originated the role of Sherlock Holmes. It premiered at Cleveland Play House in November 2011, directed by Aaron Posner and won the 2012 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Play.

The world premiere of Ken's first play for children, Twas The Night Before Christmas, which chronicles the adventures of a mouse, an elf and a spunky little girl who set off to save Christmas from an evil ex-elf who is trying to double-cross Santa, opened at The Adventure Theatre in November 2011.

In the fall of 2011, Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Virginia premiered one of Ludwig's newer shows, Midsummer/Jersey.

Other plays include Sullivan & Gilbert (a co-production of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Arts Centre of Canada, voted Best Play of 1988 by the Ottawa critics); a new adaptation of Where’s Charley? for the Kennedy Center; Divine Fire; and a mystery, Postmortem. For television, he co-wrote the 1990 Kennedy Center Honors for CBS (Emmy Award nomination), and a television pilot for Carol Channing. For film he wrote Lend Me A Tenor for Columbia Pictures and All Shook Up for Touchstone Pictures and director Frank Oz.

Over the years, Ludwig has earned two Olivier Awards, three Tony Award nominations, two Helen Hayes Awards, the Edgar Award, the Edwin Forest Award, the Pennsylvania Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and an honorary doctorate from York University.

In 2006, The Times called Ludwig “the purveyor of light comedy to Middle America. ...There is hardly a regional theatre in America that hasn’t a work of his scheduled.” His work has been performed in over 25 countries throughout the world, with translations into at least 16 languages.

Ludwig is an Associate Artist of the Alley Theatre in Houston. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the Shakespeare Theatre of Washington and an Honorary Trustee of the Shakespeare Guild. He has served on the New Play Committees of the National Endowment for the Arts and the American College Theater Festival, where he annually chooses and presents the Mark Twain Award for outstanding comic performance and recently established the Ken Ludwig Playwriting Scholarship. He has lectured on drama at various universities around the country. His work has appeared in The Yale Review, and his book for Crown Publishing entitled How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare will be released in Summer 2013.

Ludwig, his wife, Adrienne George, and their children Olivia and Jack reside in Washington, D.C. His brother, Eugene Ludwig, was U.S. Comptroller of the Currency.