Event Date:
Event Date Details:
FEB 20-22, 25, 27, 28, MAR 1 | 7:30pm
MAR 1 | 2:00pm
Event Location:
- Performing Arts Theater
A LAUNCH PAD Preview Production
Strange Birds
By E. M. Lewis
Directed by Risa Brainin
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS PRODUCTION, VISIT THE LAUNCH PAD WEBSITE!
https://launchpad.theaterdance.ucsb.edu/news#
ABOUT THE PLAY
In a remote mountain cabin, five women reckon with dark forces in this fierce and funny feminist thriller. Strange Birds is about women and wolves... and sisters... and secrets.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
E. M. Lewis is an award-winning playwright, teacher, lyricist, and opera librettist. Her work has been produced around the world, and published by Samuel French. She received the Steinberg Award for How the Light Gets In and Song of Extinction and the Primus Prize for Heads from the American Theater Critics Association, the Ted Schmitt Award from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle for outstanding writing of a world premiere play, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a playwriting fellowship from the New Jersey State Arts Commission, the 2016 Oregon Literary Fellowship in Drama, and an Edgerton Award for her epic Antarctic play Magellanica that was produced at Artists Repertory Theater in 2018 and released as a five-part audio podcast in 2020. Other plays by Lewis include: Apple Season (National New Play Network rolling world premiere), The Gun Show (more than fifty productions across the country; Edinburgh Fringe), True Story, Dorothy's Dictionary, You Can See All the Stars (a play for college students commissioned by the Kennedy Center), and Apple Hunters! Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Fallen Giant, a new opera commissioned by American Lyric Theater that Lewis wrote with composer Evan Meier, premiered at Opera Modesto in 2024.
She is now working on a big new play called The Frankenstein Project, which will have a workshop production at Florida Atlantic University in spring 2025. Lewis is currently part of the Mellon Foundation’s National Playwright Residency Program, and is a proud member of LineStorm Playwrights, Opera America, and the Dramatists Guild. She lives on her family’s farm in Oregon.