Steve Feffer

Playwright

Steve Feffer is the Michigan Ambassador for the Dramatists Guild.

 

Steve’s plays have been produced or developed by theatres that include the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Untitled Theatre #61’s International Festival of Jewish Theatre, National Jewish Theatre, Stages Repertory Theatre, Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, The Biograph Theatre (Chicago), Ruckus Theatre (Chicago), and the Whole Art and Fancy Pants Theatres (Kalamazoo), among numerous others.

 

Steve's play “The Origins of the Drink They Named After Me” is published in Best American Short Plays 2012-13 (Applause Books).  His play “And Yet…” is published in Best American Short Plays 2010-11 (Applause Books); and “Little Airplanes of the Heart” is published in Best American Short Plays 1997-98 (Applause Books) and Plays from Ensemble Studio Theatre 2000 (Faber and Faber).  Dramatists Play Service publishes his play The Wizards of Quiz; Heinemann Books and New Issues Press have published additional theatre pieces.  His current book project is the anthology When the Promise Was Broken:  Plays Inspired by Bruce Springsteen, due in March 2018 from Smith and Kraus Theatre Books.

 

Steve has won a number of national playwriting awards including twice winning the New Jewish Theatre Project Award from the Foundation for Jewish Culture (most recently for Ain’t Got No Home); and the Dorothy Silver Award for New Jewish Playwriting.  Other national awards include the Jamie Hammerstein Award from Ensemble Studio Theatre for “Little Airplanes of the Heart” and the Southwest Play Award for a Play for Young Audiences for The House I Call Love.

 

Steve has a BFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University; an MFA from the University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop; and a Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 

He is a Professor in the Creative Writing Program at Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo), where he directs the undergraduate and graduate playwriting programs (MFA and Ph.D.), and where he has won his college’s highest teaching award.  Since arriving in Kalamazoo thirteen years ago, he has founded, and continues to produce or direct, three new play festivals that showcase or include student, community, regional and/or national work: WMU’s New Play Project; WMU’s Activate Midwest: New Play Festival; and the Theatre Kalamazoo New Play Festival.

 

He serves on the National Executive Committee for the National Playwriting Program of the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival and has won KCACTF’s highest regional award, the Gold Medallion for Excellence in Theatre Education.