Ken Ludwig

Ken Ludwig (born March 15, 1950) is an American playwright and theatre director whose work has been performed in more than 30 countries in over 20 languages.

Personal life

Ken Ludwig was born in York, Pennsylvania. His father was a doctor and his mother was a former Broadway chorus girl. Ludwig was educated at the York Suburban Senior High School, York PA. He received a degrees from Haverford College, Harvard University, where he studied music with Leonard Bernstein, and Trinity College at Cambridge University. His older brother, Eugene Ludwig served as President Clinton's Comptroller of the Currency.

Ludwig lives in Washington, DC. He is married and has two children.

Career

Ken Ludwig's first Broadway play, Lend Me a Tenor (1989), which Frank Rich of the New York Times called "one of the two great farces by a living writer", won three Tony Awards and was nominated for nine. His second Broadway and West End production, Crazy for You (1992), ran for over five years and won the Tony Award, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, LA Drama Critics Circle, Helen Hayes Award, and Laurence Olivier Awards as Best Musical. Other Broadway credits include Moon Over Buffalo (1995) with Carol Burnett and Lynn Redgrave (on Broadway) and Frank Langella and Joan Collins at the Old Vic in London. He wrote the book for a musical adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (2001), and a new adaptation of the classic Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur play, Twentieth Century (2004) starring Alec Baldwin and Anne Heche. A revival of Lend Me A Tenor opened on Broadway in 2010, starring Tony Shalhoub and Justin Bartha.