Kelly Younger

Kelly Younger

Professor: B.A., Loyola Marymount University; M.A., Loyola University, Chicago; M.A. and Ph.D., Drama Studies, National University of Ireland, University College Dublin.

Kelly Younger is an award-winning playwright with work staged off-Broadway, in Los Angeles, Chicago, throughout the Midwest and South, as well as in Canada, England, and Ireland. He has developed work with Manhattan Theatre Club, Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA, New Repertory Theatre, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, and The Blank, among others. New York’s Irish Repertory Theatre commissioned Younger to write the stage adaptation of Peter Quinn’s novel Banished Children of Eve, the production of which ran off-Broadway Fall 2010.

He is also developing the comedy In the Fold (finalist for the Joanne Woodward/Paul Newman Drama Award), and the drama Tender, an earlier version of which received a developmental production at Gloucester Stage and was nominated for a Best Play of the Year IRNE award. Select other works include: Once a Marine, PlayFest 2010, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre; I Think You Think I Love You (Playscripts); Forgive me, Father (JAC publishing); Lady Gregory’s Ingredients (JAC publishing), winner of Ireland’s National Lady Gregory Playwriting Award;Off Compass, winner of the John Gassner New Play Award, and Why Wyoming, Critics’ Choice Samuel French off-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).  Younger is managed by Washington Square Arts and Films in NY and represented by Creative Artists Agency in LA and NY.

At LMU, Younger conducts workshops in play writing, teaches courses in the survey of drama, and leads seminars in modern and contemporary drama, Irish drama, classical drama in translation, performance studies and drama theory.  Critical book publications include Dionysus in Ireland: Irish Adaptations of Greek Tragedies (Mellen) and Beth Henley in an Hour (Smith and Kraus).  He has also published numerous interviews, book reviews, pedagogy essays, and articles on plays and playwrights.  For the university, Younger serves as faculty moderator of Alpha Sigma Nu Honors Society.  For the department, Younger serves as the co-moderator of the English Honors Society Sigma Tau Delta, as well as the faculty advisor for the Screenwriting Minor.