Ellen M. Lewis

Ellen M. Lewis came to New York after finishing her studies (Howard University, UC Berkeley, University of Minnesota) and is formally a faculty member of Hofstra University. She is a member of the African/American writers group of Playwrights Horizons and a member of The Lab Theater Company. She was a writer with Circle Rep Theater and is a member of the Dramatist Guild. She is currently working on a play with music The Golden Gates, about the Golden Gate Quartet. She was commissioned to write the play by Blue River Productions. The play received its first reading in November 1998. Her play Eastville was produced at Connecticut Repertory Company in their 1998 summer season. Her play Urban Candles was read at New Federal Theater, Playwrights Horizons, and Ensemble Studio Theater. Her play Sun and the moon live in the sky has generated a great deal of interest (6 readings and workshops) garnered the attention of such theaters as Lincoln Center, Circle Rep Theatre and The American Music Theater Festival. She is one of the 1997 Berrilla Kerr Award recipients in acknowledgement of her contribution to the theater.

Ellen is the author of numerous plays, including the following:

URBAN CANDLES, produced by Montauk Theater Productions, which has received public readings by such theater company’s as Playwright’s Horizons, and Woody King’s, New Federal Theater, as well as Circle Repertory Company.

INVASION OF THE COLORED PEOPLE, a play about Ellen’s father, Woodfin Lewis, the first African American Nuclear Physicists, received a Sloan Foundation Grant for plays promoting science and technology and is underdevelopment at the History Theater, in St. Paul, Minnesota, where Woodfin Lewis first worked for the Honeywell Corporation in the 50’s.

EASTVILLE, a play about Harriet Tubman, which was first produced by the Connecticut Repertory Company, and subsequently produced by The Writers Theater of Chicago.

THE SUN AND THE MOON LIVE IN THE SKY, musicals for the Eugene O’Neill Musical Theater Conference “Golden Gates,” a play about the Golden Gate Quartet, and several scripts for ABC daytime television.

Ellen is a member of the Writers Guild and the Dramatist Guild.