Loren Crawford

Loren Crawford is a playwright, performer, filmmaker, educator and kundalini yoga instructor. Her stage plays include Prelude: The Life and Work of Katherine Mansfield,  Missing Memaw, Dye Frye & Wicked John and the Devil published by New Plays, Inc., Mama: A play for Voices, The People Could Fly, and The Unembarrassed Mind with Stephan Mazurek. Her upcoming project is a collaboration with director Stephan Mazurek and musician Jon Langford of The Mekons.Their theatrical construction based on Langford's 2006 release Gold Brick  will premier at Chicago's Storefront Theater in the fall of 2008 as a Walkabout Theater production. As a performer she has worked with Itinerant Theater Guild, Walkabout Theater, Next Theatre, Piven Theatre and XSight! Performance Group. In Chicago she conducts playwriting residencies in high schools and teaches yoga in multiple locations, including her own studio and her daughter's elementary school. With Stephan Mazurek she has formed Ruffian Pictures whose first full-length documentary "Under Kentucky Skies: 25 years of the Kentucky Music Weekend" first aired on KET. Since 1994, she has worked extensively throughout Kentucky as an artist-in-residence developing and directing original work with students as well as designing and implementing an after-school theatre program for youth at risk.

My residency work is project-directed, tailored to specific students and specific events. In the course of the project's evolution, students learn the elements of drama, as well as acquire research skills, the ability to work as a team and most importantly, self-confidence.

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE Highlights
2003 Maryhurst Academy, a live-in psychiatric treatment center for girls. 3 week Special Arts residency funded by Kentucky Arts Council and The National Endowment for the Arts. A collaboration with folk singer John Gage, culminating in the performance of a student generated piece "A Journey of Hope".

2000 Lesley County, Ky. Two week Teacher Incentive Program Grant (TIP) funded by the Kentucky Arts Council writing a play about The Frontier Nursing Service with junior English classes at Lesley County High School.
 
2000 Owensboro. Ky. Designed and directed a ten week after-school theatre program for inner-city elementary students, culminating in the production of the play I wrote for them, Trail of the Tricksters, at the Riverpark Center. Funded by The Marilyn and William Young Charitable Foundation. I also worked in the public school system teaching playwriting at the Owensboro 5/6 Center, The Owensboro Middle School and High School.
 
1999 Harlan County, Ky. three week summer theater and video intensive for young people culminating in the creation of a video piece and the performance of Dye Frye's Long Day and a student generated work: Finding Our Voices. Funded by the Kentucky Arts Council, The Harlan Board of Tourism, The City of Harlan and the Family Resource and Youth Services Center of Harlan. Collaboration with Stephan Mazurek.
 
1998 Brooklawn Youth Services, Louisville, Ky. A three month AIR in a live-in psychiatric treatment center for boys aged seven through seventeen, culminating in the performance at the Martin Experimental Theater at the Kentucky Center for the Arts of plays I wrote for them: The Ugly Duckling, Monster Stress Talk Show, A Writer's Nightmare, Home is Where.
 
1998 Christian County, Ky. A twenty day AIR shared with Erin Delaney in which we worked with the four Middle schools to create and produce an original theatre/movement piece about the Tobacco Wars and the Night Riders titled The Trust and the Turmoil performed at the Alhambra Theatre in Hopkinsville.