William Inge Center for the Arts Welcomes Karen Carpenter as New Interim Artistic Director

Karen Carpenter, a producer, director and teacher, a theater-maker for more than 30 years, has been appointed the interim Artistic Director of the William Inge Center for the Arts and the 34th Annual William Inge Theatre Festival. The Inge Festival is the Official Theater Festival of the State of Kansas, hosted on the campus of Independence Community College, which houses the William Inge archives.

Karen comes to this post after serving in previous Inge Festivals as the director of lifetime achievement tributes to Arthur Kopit and David Henry Hwang, and the 100th birthday tribute to William Inge. For the 28th Festival, she curated and directed six "lost" one-acts by William Inge, which she entitled Inge: Complex, in conjunction with their first publication. She has also directed the initial development readings of new works for nine Inge Center playwrights-in-residence. For the past two years, she has served on the William Inge Festival Foundation Board of Trustees.

"The trustees of the college are very pleased that a professional of Karen's stature will be working to make the William Inge Theatre Festival and the Inge Center for the Arts a success," said Daniel Barwick, ICC President. "Karen has been a strong partner of the Center in the past; this new relationship will take advantage of the scope of her experience and her artistic vision."

"I am thrilled to have this opportunity to further the Inge Festival legacy begun by Margaret Goheen in 1982, of honoring playwrights for distinguished achievement in the Theatre", said Carpenter. "There is no other institution in America that celebrates significant writers in quite this way. For the past ten years, I have made working with writers on new works for the stage my life's focus; I look forward now to enabling the playwrights of today and tomorrow through the WICA's playwright residencies, and to providing our students mentorship by more working theater professionals than at any other two-year institution in the country."

The roster of internationally renowned playwrights who have traveled to the Inge Festival to receive the William Inge Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre Award includes Arthur Miller, Stephen Sondheim, Edward Albee, Wendy Wasserstein, David Henry Hwang, Tina Howe and Neil Simon, to name only a few.

KAREN CARPENTER is a producer, director and teacher; a theater-maker known for her dramaturgical work on premiere presentations of new works for the stage. Karen has created theater and large-scale events to great success, for over 30 years.

Best known for directing the smash hit, Love Loss and What I Wore, by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron, produced by Daryl Roth; her production was met with unanimous critical acclaim, broke all existing off-Broadway box office records, won the Drama Desk Award for Best Unique Theatrical Experience, and ran a record 1013 performances in New York, featuring rotating celebrity casts. Karen has directed over 150 of our most celebrated comediennes in the show to date: Rosie O'Donnell, Jane Lynch, Marlo Thomas, Fran Drescher, Rhea Perlman, Tyne Daly, Natasha Lyonne, Kate Mulgrew, Janeane Garofolo, and Caroline Rhea, among them. Additional companies have played Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, Sydney, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Norway, Germany, and the Philippines; the show is now enjoyed world-wide. A new tour will play the U.S. in 2015.

Her most recent stage work includes the New York Times critics' pick Handle With Care, soon to be at the Colony in Los Angeles, the premiere of Witnessed by the World at 59E59; regional productions of The Vagina Monologues at Bucks County Playhouse, starring Andrea McArdle, Lea Delaria, and Adriene Lenox; and the premiere of Wendy Yondorf's Admit One in a sold-out run at New Jersey Rep, now Broadway-bound. Last season, she directed Michael Keaton for the Festival de Sole, Napa; premiered Rosemary Loar's fractured-fairytale rock musical, Spoolie Girl, for the Midtown International Theater Festival (Best of the Fest,) and Mary Walsh's Dancing With Rage in Newfoundland, which toured Canada.

The Inge Foundation commissioned her to curate an evening of previously unpublished and unproduced short works, she entitled Inge: Complex, featuring the world premieres of six "lost" one-acts by William Inge, in conjunction with their first publication; Lifetime Achievement tributes to David Henry Hwang and Arthur Kopit; and the 100th Birthday Tribute to William Inge, Farther Off From Heaven. She has directed the initial development readings of nine playwrights in residence at the Inge Center, and is honored to serve on the William Inge Festival Foundation Board of Trustees.

For five seasons Ms. Carpenter was Associate Artistic Director for the Tony-winning Old Globe Theater, where she was the artistic producer for over 60 plays and musicals by theatrical luminaries such as Arthur Miller, Tom Stoppard, Marvin Hamlisch, Jack O'Brien, Dan Sullivan, Mark Lamos, Stephen Wadsworth, John Rando, Henry Krieger, and Nora Ephron; featuring a roster of renowned actors: Ellen Burstyn, Dana Delaney, Cherry Jones, Swoosie Kurtz, John Lithgow, and Norburt Leo Butz among them. Her own most noteworthy productions there: the American premiere of Abi Morgan's Splendour (Critic's Choice, Los Angeles Times), Nilo Cruz's Two Sisters and a Piano (Critic's Choice, Los Angeles Times), Jeffrey Hatcher's Smash (Patte? Award), and Harold Pinter's Betrayal (Craig Noel Award, The Reader's "Best Bet"). Her production of As You Like It was chosen Best of the Year by San Diego Magazine. In 2005 she left the Old Globe to devote herself exclusively to working with writers on new plays. Upon leaving, Ms Carpenter was one of a select few nominees nationwide for the Alan Schneider Award at TCG, and the Mike Ockrent Fellowship at SSDC.

For several years, Ms. Carpenter served President Clinton as project coordinator for his inaugural and subsequent Clinton Global Initiatives. She was creative director for the launch of the United Nations/World Health Organization's global campaign to eradicate infant and maternal mortalities worldwide: "Deliver Now for Women and Children", starring Chaka Kahn, Ricki Lake, Lidya Kebede, and Girls Inc., featuring the first all-female panel in the history of the United Nations. Karen also participated by invitation in the Friends of the U.N.'s think tank for their millennium goals campaign, "The Big Push".

She directed the launch of the Million Women's Heart Project: "Take Heart", a national movement to test a million women for heart health in the U.S., with Donna Karan and a panel of women at the forefront of producing innovative media and news journalism: Deborah Roberts, Ali Wentworth, Pat Mitchell and Joni Evans. She has been line producer for such lavish events as Moet-Hennessey's Louis Vuitton Car Show, a sumptuous display of the most precious antique cars in the world, at Rockefeller Center; and the PBS Festival of Teaching and Learning with the original presentation of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

Deemed a "provocateur" and "impresario" by the press for her Indianapolis Symphony concerts, Riot of Spring featuring Roger Rees, and Hear Art, See Music Live, featuring artists Andre? Miripolsky and Michael Arthur; tickets were in such demand for her concerts that they were scalped out front for the first time in symphony history. Karen also staged Top of the Heap by Jeffrey Lodin and William Squier, for the New York Musical Festival (Director's Choice Award), and a new commedia operetta, Mira Spektor's Giovanni the Fearless, for the League of Professional Theater Women's 30 Plays for 30 Years.

In her early career, Karen was considered one of the top production stage managers on Broadway, where her work included the premieres of August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, and Two Trains Running; and musicals such as Les Mise?rables and Sunset Boulevard. Subsequently, Karen chaired the MFA Stage Management program for the Yale School of Drama, where she managed the premieres of noted playwrights John Guare, Suzan Lori Parks, and Jeffrey Hatcher among many others, as production stage manager for the Yale Repertory Theater.

In 2010, her alma mater, Boston University's School of Theatre Arts, established in her honor, The Karen Carpenter Award for Excellence in Theatre Arts, to be given annually to a graduating student of exceptional merit. Karen served on the faculty of the Yale Drama School from 1990-1996. She has taught master classes in directing, theater production, and stage management in universities across the country, and is authoring a book on these subjects, entitled "Enabling Creativity: Philosophy and Practice".

Follow Karen on her website, kcdirector.com, or on twitter @KCdirector.

THE WILLIAM INGE CENTER FOR THE ARTS was founded in 1982 on the campus of Independence Community College in Independence, Kansas, in celebration and memory of Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award-winning playwright and native son, William Inge. Its initial event was a modest one-day commemoration of William Inge's life. Now, the Inge Center's showpiece event is a four-day internationally-recognized William Inge Theatre Festival which has honored some of the world's most prestigious playwrights. Arthur Miller, Wendy Wasserstein, August Wilson, Neil Simon and Stephen Sondheim are some of the honorees who have traveled to Independence to accept the Festival's Distinguished Achievement in American Theatre Award.

Other honors bestowed at the Festival include the Otis Guernsey New Voices in Playwriting award, which recognizes a peer-nominated emerging playwright; the Kansas Citizen for the Arts Award, for superlative artistic achievements by a Kansas native; the Margaret Goheen Award, for outstanding contributions to theater in Independence, KS and the surrounding area (named after the founder of the Festival,) and the Jerome Lawrence Award, for contributions to the Inge Festival and the national theatre arena, by a non-playwright.

The William Inge Center for the Arts was originally founded as the William Inge Theatre Festival. Since 2002, the Inge Center has significantly expanded its services, prompting a formal name change to the William Inge Center for the Arts in 2004. Year-round programs include the professional Playwrights-in- Residence program, which brings four accomplished playwrights to Independence to live in William Inge's historic family home, and provides them time to work on new projects.

Since 2002 these resident playwrights have taught in the William Inge Center's Playwrights-in-the- Schools program, in partnership with rural area schools. The resident playwright instructors teach playwriting, serve as mentors, and help students with their narrative writing skills, giving the students tools to express themselves and an outlet for describing what they see and experience in the world around them.

The Inge Center also conducts Guest Artist presentations, providing artistic instruction by knowledgeable guest artists to school audiences as well as the general public. Partnering with the 24-Hour Company of New York City, the Inge Center sponsors three versions of the 24-Hour Plays, bringing students from various high schools and colleges in the region to work together to create new plays in a creatively intense pressure cooker that inspires wild artistic achievement and life-long friendships. Other programs and partnerships include the Dana Foundation and Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education Aesthetic Education teaching artist and classroom teaching programs; Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Inge House Scholarship scenes and workshops, Educational Theatre Association (Thespians) playwriting scholarships, and Lecture-Demonstrations throughout the region on the legacy of William Inge.

The Inge Center has periodically commissioned and produced new work from past resident playwrights. Among these commissions is a partnership with the Cornerstone Theater of Los Angeles and the 5.4.7 Arts Center in Greensburg, KS to create and produce a new play written by Marcia Cebulska, documenting the recovery of Greensburg from the largest tornado in recorded history.

The Center continues to produce the annual William Inge Theatre Festival, a nationally renowned event that offers educational and cultural programming. In June of 2009 The William Inge Theatre Festival was named the Official State Theatre Festival of Kansas when Senate Bill 1 was signed by the Governor.

The William Inge Collection, comprising his many manuscripts, is housed at Independence Community College and is available to students and scholars who are interested in using it for research. The Inge Collection has a number of his scripts that have not been made public; in 2009 the Inge Center was proud to present several of these short plays, now published as "A Complex Evening: Six Short Plays by William Inge." The Inge Collection has been the source of the 2010 New York premiere of another of Inge's previously unseen work, "The Killing."

WILLIAM MOTTER INGE (1913-1973) Born in Independence on May 3, 1913, he was the second son of Luther Clay Inge and Maude Sarah Gibson-Inge and the youngest of five children. Independence had a profound influence on the young Inge and he would later attribute his understanding of human behavior to growing up in this small town.

In 1930, Inge graduated from Independence High School and went on to attend Independence Junior College (now Independence Community College), graduated from The University of Kansas, and George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, TN.

In 1937-38, Inge taught high school English and Drama in Columbus, Kansas and from 1938-1943, was a member of the faculty at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. In 1943, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he worked as the drama and music critic for the St. Louis Times. It was while he worked as a drama critic that Inge became acquainted with Tennessee Williams and accompanied him to a performance of his play The Glass Menagerie in Chicago. Within three months he had completed Farther Off from Heaven, which was produced by Margo Jones in Dallas. Inge returned to a teaching position at Washington University in St. Louis and began serious work on turning a fragmentary short story into a one act play. This work evolved into a play that earned Inge the title of most promising playwright of the 1950 Broadway season. The play was Come Back, Little Sheba. It was in 1952 that Paramount Pictures released the film version of Come Back, Little Sheba directed by Daniel Mann and starring Shirley Booth and Burt Lancaster.

In 1953, Picnic opened at The Music Box Theatre in New York City. Picnic won Inge a Pulitzer Prize, The Drama Critic Circle Award, The Outer Circle Award, and The Theatre Club Award. In 1956, Columbia Picures released the film version of Picnic directed by Joshua Logan and starring William Holden, Kim Novak and Rosalind Russell.

Inge's next success came in 1955 when Bus Stop opened at The Music Box Theatre in New York City. Directed by Joshua Logan, the film version of Bus Stop was released by Fox in 1956 with Marilyn Monroe, Don Murray and Eileen Heckart in starring roles.

The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, a reworking of his first play Farther Off from Heaven opened on Broadway in 1957. The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, considered to be Inge's finest play, is one in which he draws most directly from his past. It was released as a film starring Dorothy McGuire, Robert Preston, Shirley Knight, Eve Arden, and Angela Lansbury in 1960.

In 1959, A Loss of Roses opened to poor reviews and closed after a three week run. In 1960, Inge's first screenplay, Splendor in the Grass was filmed in New York. It starred Natalie Wood, Pat Hingle and newcomer Warren Beatty. It also featured the only screen appearance of Inge himself, who played the part of Reverend Whitman. Splendor in the Grass was a triumph for Inge and won him an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.

His next two plays were Natural Affection in 1963 and Where's Daddy? in 1965. Both were unsuccessful. This prompted him to leave New York in 1963 at the age of fifty and move to California. Off The Main Road was produced in 1964, as a teleplay on the Bob Hope Chrysler Theater television show. In 1968-70, he resumed his teaching career at the University of California at Irvine. In his remaining years he published two novels: "Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff" (1970)and "My Son Is a Splendid Driver" (1971).

In 2009, for the 28th annual Inge Festival, the William Inge Center for the Arts presented Inge: Complex, directed by Karen Carpenter, an evening comprised of six Inge one-acts never produced before, in conjunction with their publication.

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