Ken Ludwig To Be Distinguished Speaker At Annual Sherlock Holmes Birthday Weekend

Ken Ludwig - the two-time Olivier Award-winning playwright and author of more than two dozen plays, including the whodunits BASKERVILLE: A SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY and a stage adaptation of Agatha Christie's MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS - will be the Distinguished Speaker at The Bakers Street Irregulars' Annual Sherlock Holmes Birthday Weekend on Friday, January 11 at the Yale Club in NYC, it has been announced by The Baker Street Irregulars, a literary society that celebrates all things Sherlockian.

Mr. Ludwig joins a list of prominent Sherlock Holmes experts who have spoken previously at The Baker Street Irregulars' annual gatherings: the writer and film director Nicholas Meyer, novelists Kim Newman and Alan Bradley, and playwright/screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher.

About his upcoming speech, Mr. Ludwig states, "Speaking before The Baker Street Irregulars feels to me like the greatest Sherlockian honor I can ever imagine, and I'm humbled by it. These Irregular know their Holmes, and I plan to sit at their feet and soak it all in. After writing BASKERVILLE and my new play MORIARTY, my head has been filled with Sherlock Holmes for two years, and this for me is the icing on the cake. Of course, in this company, the cake might be poisoned and the doors locked, but what the heck, I can't wait."

The Baker Street Irregulars are fictional characters who appear in various Sherlock Holmes stories, as street boys who are employed by Holmes as intelligence agents. The literary society was founded by Christopher Morley in 1934.

Ken Ludwig is a two-time Olivier Award-winning playwright whose work is performed throughout the world in more than thirty countries and over twenty languages. He has written 26 plays and musicals, with six Broadway productions and seven in London's West End. His Tony-winning play LEND ME A TENOR, was called "one of the classic comedies of the 20th century" by The Washington Post. Other plays and musicals include CRAZY FOR YOU (5 years on Broadway, Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Best Musical), MOON OVER BUFFALO (Broadway and West End), THE ADVENTURES OF Tom Sawyer (Broadway), TREASURE ISLAND (West End), TWENTIETH CENTURY (Broadway), LEADING LADIES, SHAKESPEARE IN HOLLYWOOD, THE GAME'S AFOOR, THE FOX ON THE FAIRWAY, THE THREE MUSKETEERS, THE BEAUX' STRATAGEM, BASKERVILE, A COMEDY OF TENORS, the upcoming world premiere of GODS OF COMEDY and MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, which has enjoyed successful engagements at the McCarter Theater and Hartford Stage Company. He has received commissions from the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Old Globe and the Bristol Old Vic, and he is a Sallie B. Goodman Fellow of the McCarter Theatre. His many awards and honors include the Charles MacArthur Award, two Helen Hayes Awards, the SETC Distinguished Career Award, the Edgar Award for Best Mystery and the Edwin Forrest Award for Contributions to the American Theater. His book How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare (Random House) won the Falstaff Award for Best Shakespeare Book and his essays are published by the Yale Review. Ken's plays and musicals are produced somewhere in the United States and abroad every night of the year.