What a wonderful letter. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Obviously, your terrific accomplishments are a result of your own hard work and passion, but I'm glad to hear that your experience working on Crazy For You was so meaningful. I'm very touched that you saved my letter from 2008.

And congratulations on your awards and scholarships! I wish you all the very best as you begin your life at Clarion. Please keep me posted on your work. It was so kind of you to write.

Warm regards,

Ken

I'm so glad to hear that you're in Leading Ladies.

Duncan is not a bad man. This is key to understanding him. When he loses the battle to expose the "girls," he doesn't take his marbles and huff off. He's part of a community and he joins them. He's not happy about it and I think this is a source of comedy in his last moments. But he doesn't stalk away in defeat crying "I'll be back and finish the job." He's been proven wrong and he's resigned to it.

I hope this helps.

Have fun with the show!

All best,

Thanks very much for your email and for your kind words.

Katharine Hepburn was known for her distinctive sort-of wide-mouthed
aristocratic enunciation of words. In those days they would tell young
ladies striving to be like Hepburn to speak as though holding a knife
in their teeth.

I hope this helps. Best of the luck with the role! And thank you again for writing.

Best regards,

Ken

Dear Lena,

Thank you for your lovely note. I'm enormously pleased you enjoy my plays. It really does my heart good.

It's odd, choosing to be a playwright. I look at my brother, who's a businessman, and many of my friends who are doctors and lawyers, and I think about how safe and sensible it is to go into those wonderful professions. For some reason, as I was growing up, I was simply thrilled by going into a theatre and sitting in audience as the lights went down. And from the beginning what I loved best were comedies. My parents took me to see shows in New York once a year as I was growing up - and by the time I was in high school in a small town in southern Pennsylvania I was going to every play within a 50-mile radius. My palette expanded from nice straightforward, well-plotted domestic comedies, like the early plays of Neil Simon and the aristocratic well-made plays of William Douglas Home (which I continue to love), to the more mysterious comedies of Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan (mysterious because they're so artful and seem so effortless); and then to the zanier comedies of Ben Travers and Georges Feydeau. I then acquired a huge love for 18th century English comedy; and then for Shaw and Shakespeare, which I study for hours a week to this day. I'm a firm believer that if you follow what you love you'll find a way of making a happy life and (as my father always counseled me) you must wake up every day looking forward to the day's work. If you don't, you're in the wrong profession.

Thank you again for your wonderful note. It was kind of you to write.

All best,

Ken

Ken Ludwig

Thanks a million for your nice email. I'm thrilled you liked it! I'll bet you can write twice as funny - just keep at it. That's the trick.

It was nice of you to take the time to write.

Thanks again,

Ken

Thank you so much for your feedback on the website. I'm glad you've found it to be useful. And congratulations on your upcoming production of Leading Ladies! My manager came to see The Heights' production of Shakespeare in Hollywood last year and enjoyed it immensely.

Both of your questions regarding stage directions are the result of mistakes in the printed script. Thank you for catching them.

In the first instance, you are correct: Jack and Leo have conflated multiple Shakespeare plays as part of their performance of "Scenes from Shakespeare." Originally, this scene only included two different plays, but during rehearsals for the premiere at the Alley theatre (which I directed) I revised the scene because it seemed like more fun to have them quote from lots of plays. Knowing that they are performing for such provincial audiences, they've decided to thread together the great lines of Shakespeare thinking that perhaps no one will be the wiser. The stage directions in the Samuel French text are left over from the earlier draft of the play.

You second question involves another mistake in the printing. The passage originally contained this line of Viola's, "With adorations, with fertile tears," but in rehearsals, I cut the scene down and left the original stage direction. In the printed edition of the script, the tone should shift at: "Oh if I did love you in my master's flame."

Thank you again for your email and good observations. We'll make sure that the next printed edition of the play reflects these changes.

Best of luck in your final week of rehearsal. I'm sure your production will be a huge success!

Warm regards,

Ken

Dear Johnny,

I can't thank you enough for your beautiful note. What you say makes me extremely proud and touches me very deeply. This, of course, is why I write: to try and change people's lives, even just a little; to make them happier and to give them hope.

I wish I could see Town Centre Theatre's production of Moon. I'll bet you're terrific as George. Please tell everyone in the cast and crew that I say hello.

Thank you again for taking the time to write such a wonderful note. It means a lot to me.

Warm regards,

Ken

Dear Molly,

Thank you so much for writing such a sweet note. It's not often that I get an email from someone just to say how much they enjoyed one of my plays. It was very kind of you to take the time to write.

I've heard about the Montana Rep production, and it sounds like they've done a really wonderful job. It touches me greatly to hear that you enjoyed it so much.

I wish you well in all that you do.

Warm regards,

Ken

Dear Heather,

Thank you so much for your email. I’d be delighted to suggest some monologues. You’ll know which ones fit your needs best, so they’re not in any special order.

First, there are three monologues from my play Leading Ladies which might fit the bill.

1. One possibility begins on page 55 of the Samuel French edition, in which Meg first meets Leo starting with “Oh how do you do." To make it nice and full, you should put the two speeches together and ignore the interruption. You should play her utter astonishment at meeting her hero, which makes her tongue-tied -- but then everything she’s thinking just pours out of her anyway.

2. Towards the end of Act 2 when Leo as Maxine gives Meg a pep-talk. Because it’s for a man who’s playing a woman, that might be fun to do as a woman playing a man playing a woman.

3. A third possibility is Audrey’s speech on page 97 of the Sam French edition. It begins, “Oh my gosh!” It’s the moment in the play where Audrey has met the imposters at the party off stage and saves the day. She recounts the fact that the police arrested the imposters which clears the way for Leo and foils Duncan.

There is also a possibility from my play Shakespeare in Hollywood when Olivia first meets Oberon on page 31 of the Samuel French edition, beginning with, “Thank you for hiding me” and ending with the words, “do you see?” and eliminating the three interruptions from Oberon.
In addition, here are a few of my favorite comic monologues for women in Shakespeare:

1. The Merry Wives of Windsor, Mistress Page, Act 2 scene 1, the very beginning of the scene, when she reads the letter from John Falstaff. The monologue begins, "What, have I ‘scaped love letters in the holiday time of my beauty," and ends with "puddings".

2. A Midsummer Night's Dream, Helena, Act 1 Scene 1, beginning with, “How happy some o’er other some can be” on line 226, and ending on line 251.

3. Also from The Dream, Titania in Act II, Scene 1, beginning with the line, “These are forgeries of jealousy…” (It’s not really comic per se, but it stems from the great nature-changing argument at the center of the plot and it’s so gorgeous that it transcends categories. But it’s not one where you’ll get laughs. But you will from the others!)

4. Twelfth Night, Viola, Act 2, scene 2, beginning on line 18, when Viola says, "I left no ring with her. What means this lady?" and ends with, “it is too hard a knot for me to untie.” This is perhaps my favorite monologue in all of Shakespeare.

5. Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice, Act III, scene 4, the sonnet that beings, “What fire is in mine ears..." (Also short on laughs but long on beauty.)

I hope you find some of these suggestions useful.

Best of luck with your upcoming auditions!

Warm regards,

Ken

Thank you so much for your email. And congratulations on directing both shows!

Indeed there are a wide variety of fights in The Three Musketeers. The way the fight director approached it at the Old Vic was to look at each fight as an opportunity to do a different kind of stage fight. For example, when d'Artagnan is freed from his shackles by his friends, the fight is mainly hand-to-hand combat. When the King's Guards face off with the Musketeers in the famous confrontation where d'artagnan first joins the Musketeers, it's an opportunity for a sword fight with the action occurring in four different places around the stage. When d'Artagnan saves Constance, there's an opportunity for a one-on-one sword fight focused on just the two characters. And when Milady confronts d'Artagnan it's combat with a dagger and a sword. So each fight was choreographed with the knowledge that there were lots of fights around it and that they each had to feel like a different moment in one long ballet. And of course each fight reflects the characters involved and advances not only the action per se but also the emotional journeys of the characters.

This is all equally true, of course, with regard to the fights throughout my adaptation of Treasure Island.

Unfortunately, there's not a prop list at the end of the published play, but I think the props that are necessary are implied by the action in each case. For example, the handkerchief that Aramis drops could be used when Aramis later faces d'Artagnan - and then in the fight with he Guards that immediately follows.

As for the large regiment of Musketeers, absolutely, I think that's a great idea. To have them march through the theatre or simply march onto the stage en masse would give a great sense of atmosphere to the piece and create just the kind of rousing moment that the play thrives on.

Again, thank you for your wonderful questions and I wish you all the success in the world for your production of The Three Musketeers. I'm sure it'll be a smash hit.

Best regards,

Thank you for your wonderful, thoughtful email. I'm so glad you enjoyed Sullivan and Gilbert and I'd be very glad to answer your questions:

Sullivan & Gilbert was one of my earliest plays and the inspiration for it was the relationship between my brother and me. Gilbert and Sullivan might as well have been brothers.
They were enormously close and adored each other. (As do my brother and I.) Of course they had squabbles, but they'd always end up putting things right.

I've always loved the world of Gilbert and Sullivan, ever since I can remember. And though I'm a dyed-in-the-wool opera fanatic, G&S is the one area of operetta that I enjoy equally.

As for the selections, I thought about them long and hard. I tried to choose songs that, although they were performed independent of the plot revolving around Gilbert and Sullivan themselves, somehow reflected on the action of the play. I hated to leave out some of the standards, of course, but I was also didn't want to over-egg the pudding. When all is said and done, Sullivan & Gilbert is a play with music, and it's paramount that the story has enough drive to keep us interested. Hopefully there's enough variety in the 15 or so songs in the score that anyone who doesn't know Gilbert and Sullivan's incredible works will come away with a real love for their musicals.

It's wonderful to hear that you'll be proposing the play to the board of your Musical Theatre group. Please keep me posted. In the meantime, do let me know if you have any other questions about the play. I'd be more than happy to respond.

Best regards,

Thank you so much for your email. I'm thrilled to hear that Leading Ladies had such a warm reception at Woodstock Opera House. Congratulations!

In answer to your question about the development of my plays: I generally nurture a new idea for about 2 or 3 months by simply sitting in my favorite armchair, literally just thinking about it for hours at a time. This or that development in the story or the characters will start to tug at me, and then I'll start taking notes. Once I start taking notes, I try to let the idea take me into any direction that comes to mind, then little by little the ideas start forming up into a coherent story and theme.

Usually I don't start writing a play until I have at least a general concept of what it's "about." It has always seemed to me that comedies in particular benefit from a story with a strong premise, and it's not until I come up with that premise that I start to believe that I actually have a play in the works.

After the note-taking stage, it usually takes me about a month to write the play itself, because by this time I know exactly who the characters are and what they're going to do. At this stage, it's more a matter of taking dictation than anything else. I can hear and see them exactly as though a film were playing in my head, and I have to take the dialogue down quickly enough that I don't lose it as it flies by. This is because the play has already been written in my head after all those months of thinking about it.

As for my physical writing process, I always use 11.5 x 13 legal pads that are narrow-lined. I like large sheets with lots of lines because I can get a lot on each page and therefore feel the sweep of the scene better than I could if I saw less text per page. I never use a word processor or a typewriter until the final stages of the play's development when I'm typing the second or third draft.

With regard to your question about Shakespeare, I'm a Stratfordian at heart. I do believe that Shakespeare wrote all the tragedies and comedies, as well as the romances and the problem plays. I teach Shakespeare and I've thought about these issues a lot. Was Shakespeare amazingly prolific? Absolutely. And so were Mozart and Bach. Does it matter that he came from a small town and was educated in the local school? No. Ben Jonson came from a family of bricklayers. My view is that we're talking here, with Shakespeare, about a level of genius that most of us can't begin to understand. Certainly I can't. As for the anti-Stratfordian theories, I tend to be influenced by the substantial writings of Stanley Wells, the great dean of Shakespeare studies. As he says, if William Shakespeare of Stratford didn't write these plays, it would have had to have been the greatest conspiracy in the history of the universe. Too many contemporaries refer to him and his plays in the same breath to make it otherwise.

Thank you again for your wonderful questions.

I hope all's well with you and yours and that you have a terrific holiday.

Warm regards,

Thank you for writing. And what a great question. "Moon Over Miami" was a popular film in the 1940s and was thought of as the epitome of romance. (There was also a romantic song of that title in the 1930s.) One day while writing the play, the title just popped into my head. (I guess all titles work that way.) The notion was that Buffalo is generally thought of as the antithesis of romance (like Cleveland in Lend Me A Tenor) and by juxtaposing "Moon Over" with a city like Buffalo instead of the (then) glamorous Miami, it would be a funny statement about where my protagonists are in their lives. They're not playing London or New York or Miami; they're playing Buffalo! In England a few years ago, when the show was produced at the Old Vic with Joan Collins and Frank Langella, the title was changed to Over the Moon because the English didn't know that Buffalo was the name of an American city.

The whole question of titles is so interesting. As I've gotten more experienced, I've realized how important titles are in playwriting. They give this tiny, indelible snapshot of the play, and they should be chosen with great care. They should also be as distinctive as possible. P.G. Wodehouse, the sine qua non of comic novelists, made fun of himself when he chose a generic title for one of his wildly funny novels, Summer Lightning. In the preface, after noting that he'd just heard that the same title had recently been used for two other novels in England and three others in America, he wrote: "I can only express the modest hope that this story will be considered worthy of inclusion in the list of the Hundred Best Books Called Summer Lightning."

I hope your production is a huge success. Thanks for taking the time to write.

Best regards,

What a lovely letter. I'm really thrilled that you've done three of my plays. I should have a sweatshirt with your name on it.

It's hard to encapsulate in a sentence or two what I hope to achieve with my plays. As you know from directing them, I'm generally trying to take the world into a happier, better place--to give people something to laugh about and feel good about. I want my audiences to live their lives through the basic decency and humanity of the characters. As I recently described it to someone in the press, I hope that people might think of my plays as taking their place in what is sometimes referred to as the Great Tradition of English-American Comedy, a kind of comedy stretching from Much Ado About Nothing to She Stoops to Conquer to The Man Who Came To Dinner and beyond -- comedies that bring their communities closer to the sanity and good fellowship we all deserve. My hope is that my plays like Lend Me A Tenor, Leading Ladies and Moon Over Buffalo -- as well as Shakespeare in Hollywood and all the others -- offer a relief from the dystopian visions we confront on a daily basis. The characters in my plays survive, find hope and flourish in this world, despite its challenges.

I will definitely go back to Edinburgh some day soon. It was too inspiring not to revisit. And it was a thrill seeing that one of my plays was being done there this year.

My latest play is a comedy called A Fox on the Fairway. It's a comedy about love and golf, very much in the tradition of Lend Me A Tenor, Moon Over Buffalo and Leading Ladies. It opens as underdog Quail Valley Country Club prepares to take on arch-rival Crouching Squirrel at the annual Inter-Club Golf Tournament. There's a sizable wager at stake, and the contest plays out among several love affairs, a lost diamond, objectionable sweaters and an exploding vase. Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA did a staged reading of the play in June, and they will produce the world premiere as part of their 2010-2011 season. The play will be available for licensing soon after that. I hope you'll consider directing it in the future.

Please tell the cast and crew that I wish them all the best with the production. I hope it's a smash hit!

Warm regards,

So glad to hear that you will be directing Leading Ladies in Japan!

In the original production of Leading Ladies, the balcony went off in two directions. You'll see in the stage directions that the stairs lead up to a balcony, and the balcony leads to two unseen bedrooms. Meg and Audrey come from opposite ends of the balcony, each from a different bedroom. They watch the action below as Leo and Jack take their wigs off.

If your set is not arranged this way, both Meg and Audrey could come from the same direction, since they enter at different times. The important thing is only that they're on the balcony or the landing or whatever that separates them from Jack and Leo. If you don't have a stairway or landing in the set, they could stand in the doorway. As long the characters act as if they don't see each other, and you keep them out of each other's sight-lines, we'll buy it totally.

Best of luck with the production! And please send us production photos if you have any!

With best wishes,

What a wonderful email! Thank you so much for writing.

I love George and Ira's music as you do. They are the great heroes of American popular song.

To answer your question regarding familiarity with the music, the first thing I did to prepare for writing Crazy for You was to go out and purchased every single CD of George and Ira's music I could find. Eventually, I gathered about 30 or 40 discs. I listened to them several times and by the time I started writing, I knew every song that had ever been recorded. Incidentally, I've been told by the Gershwin Estate that George and Ira wrote over 400 songs together and that many of these songs remain unrecorded to this day.

With regards to “What Causes That” and "Krazy for You," during the process of writing the musical, I was in touch with the great performer Michael Feinstein. Michael was Ira's secretary in the years before Ira's death and was kind enough to be a sort of unofficial consultant on the project. When I was looking for a good comic song, Michael reminded me that he'd recorded “What Causes That” on one of his George and Ira albums.

Michael was also very helpful to me on a more recent collaboration with the Gershwins. About three years ago, the Gershwin Estate approached me about doing a new musical based on the movie musical An American in Paris, and of course I was honored and thrilled to work on the project. The result was an incredible production that opened in May 2008 at the Alley Theatre, directed by Gregory Boyd, with a 21 piece orchestra, orchestrations by Doug Besterman, choreography by Randy Skinner, and a top notch team of designers, including Carrie Robbins (costumes), Doug Schmidt (sets) and Paul Gallo (lights). Just as Michael led me to discovering "What Causes That” and "Krazy for You," he was equally instrumental in my finding "Wake Up Brother and Dance," which I used to open An American in Paris. Discussions with Michael also helped me discover two wonderful comic songs that I use at the end of the musical, “Boy What Love Has Done To Me” and “Bad, Bad Men”.

Thank you again for writing.

Best regards,

Alas, PBS never put their wonderful broadcast of Crazy For You onto DVD. It's sitting in their archives, and of course I'd love them to take it out and put it on sale.

Thanks so much for asking.

Best,

What an eye you have. It's no wonder you're confused, because these are both mistakes in the printed text. There's no need for a skull any more, but there was in the first draft of the play. In my first draft, Leo and Jack did an excerpt from Hamlet, not the mangled Henry V they now do, at the beginning of the play. Ergo the skull. And the discrepancy in dates is again a first-draft, second-draft issue. I'd put the whole thing in 1958. I think that tracks better with other events in the play.

I'm sorry for the confusion. And good luck with the production. I'd love to hear how it goes.

All best,

I'm thrilled you're doing Moon. I must say, it's dear to my heart. It reminds me of all the wonderful theatre companies I've been a part of.

As for the fall from the stage: I think it's a cinch. As they're doing, say, the last ten or fifteen lines of the scene, have the actors rotate 90 degrees, so that by the end, they're facing into the wings (whatever you have for wings, even if it's just the steps to the side or even an area that's understood to be off-stage). Then have him scream and tumble into the "pit" (simply to the ground) which is now understood to be in that direction. The lines will tell the whole story. You could even add a line to make it clearer: "He fell into the orchestra pit!!" I think the audience will get it totally. And yes, I've seen a number of productions where the problem has been solved this way or other creative ways. Just so the audience understands that he falls and hurts himself. (Indeed, he could fall over a piece of scenery and knock himself out. Then just adjust the line in the later scene.)

Good luck on the production. Please tell the cast I said hi.

All best,

Thanks so much for your email and your kind words. I'm so glad to hear that you'll be directing Leading Ladies for the second time.

I haven't made any changes to the curtain call or the script since you directed the play in 2007. Leading Ladies was published by Samuel French in 2006, and I'm assuming this is the version you used for the Ohio Community Theatre premiere. We'd love to see pictures of the upcoming production when you have them.

Thanks so much for writing. I really appreciate it.

Thanks for your note. I'm thrilled that you'll be producing Tom Sawyer in lovely Ocean City, NJ this month! It's heartening to hear that your theatre is alive and well and growing, despite the state of the economy. Congratulations on your work.

I hope your third experience of working on Tom Sawyer is delightful and wish you all the best for your continued growth and success.

Warm regards,

Thank you so much for writing. (And we're neighbors. I grew up in York, PA and used to go to Towson with my parents. There was a terrific department store there, as I remember.)

I'm so glad you like the new website. You're one of the first people to give me feedback, so many thanks.

I'm thrilled you're doing Tenor. I've never seen the Sam French CD, but I'll get a copy immediately and write you back and identify the cues. Certainly "La donna e mobile" is the song on the radio. And you know the duet. And the extended piece is for the runaround at the end.

I think the best way for your performers to learn the duet is to get a good CD of Don Carlos and listen to it again and again. Then get the music and learn the two lines of melody. I've found that a few minutes of studying each night for a couple of weeks usually nails it. (As you can imagine, I'm a huge opera fan.)

Thanks so much for writing. And good luck on the production.

Best regards,