Kelly Younger
Kelly Younger s an award-winning playwright with work staged off-Broadway, in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, throughout the Midwest and South, as well as in Canada, England, and Ireland. He is a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA Playwrights Unit, the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, The Dramatists Guild of America, and is on the Board of Governors for Los Angeles Stage Alliance who host the annual Ovation Awards.
New York’s Irish Repertory Theatre commissioned Younger to write the stage adaptation of the novel Banished Children of Eve by Peter Quinn, the production of which ran off-Broadway Fall 2010. He is also developing In the Fold, a full-length play about the famous Rorschach inkblot test (2010 Finalist for the Joanne Woodward/Paul Newman Drama Award), and the full-length drama Tender, part of Manhattan Theatre Club’s 2011 “7@7” reading series. An earlier version of Tender received a workshop at New Repertory Theatre and a developmental production at Gloucester Stage.
Select other works include: Once a Marine, PlayFest 2010, Orlando Shakespeare Theater; I Think You Think I Love You (Playscripts; Smith and Kraus anthology "Best Plays of 2005"); Forgive me, Father (JAC publishing); Lady Gregory’s Ingredients (JAC publishing), winner of the Ireland National Lady Gregory Playwriting Award; Off Compass, winner of the John Gassner New Play Award through SUNY Stony Brook; Epiphany Cake; and Why Wyoming, Critics’ Choice Samuel French off-Broadway Festival.
Several monologues from Younger’s plays appear in various anthologies, and an excerpt of Younger’s translation of Trojan Women appears in Beth Henley’s play Revelers (Dramatists Play Service).
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Younger earned an MA in Classics at Loyola University Chicago and PhD in Drama Studies from University College Dublin in Ireland. He is currently an Associate Professor of English at Loyola Marymount University where he leads workshops in Playwriting and teaches courses in Dramatic Literature.
He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.