30 Jul The Plays of Jon Lipsky: Book Release

The Plays of Jon Lipsky, a newly published collection, will be officially released at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse on August 2nd from 5-7pm. There will be refreshments, a reading of a selection from one of the plays, and the opportunity to chat with the editors and obtain signed copies of the books. Jon Lipsky (1944 – 2011) was a Vineyard resident, and many of his plays premiered or had productions at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse. Lipsky was also associate artistic director at the Playhouse for many years.

Jon Lipsky (1944 — 2011) was a Professor of Acting and Playwriting at the Boston University School of Theater for 25 years, and he spent over three decades as a luminous voice in the Boston theater community. During this time, he forged an international career as a playwright and a pioneer of dream-based theater. During the 1970s and 1980s, Lipsky worked with the Boston-based Reality Theater Collective, where he developed his shows, Living In Exile, Beginner’s Luck and Master of Ecstasy, among others. Many of his plays are derived from literary sources: Homer’s Iliad, the writings of Jack Kerouac, the story of King Saul in the Bible, and Jack London’s Call of the Wild and White Fang. However, several of his plays are developed from personal experiences (his or other people’s) and, more specifically to his personal passions, from dreams. Eight of his finest plays are contained in this two-volume collection, with accompanying essays written by several of his closest collaborators.

Bill Barclay (Editor) is the Director of Music at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. A native of Weston, MA, he earned his MFA in Theater Education (Playmaking) with Jon Lipsky at the Boston University School of Theater, and collaborated with Lipsky as actor, composer, co-teacher, and co-director on many projects, notably Living in Exile, Call of the Wild, and ‘Cross the Water, a play based on dreams. Bill has held 10-year residencies with Shakespeare & Company and the Actors’ Shakespeare Project, both as actor, composer, and director. He is a past winner of the Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship, the largest grant for actors in the US, and composes regularly for the Globe, including the Globe-to-Globe Hamlet touring to every country in the world.

Jonah Lipsky (Editor) is Jon Lipsky’s son, an actor and a writer. Some of his favorite acting roles include Hal in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, produced in 2013 by the Vineyard Playhouse, and Louis in both parts of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, produced in the fall of 2011 by Bennington College. He has worked in journalism, most notably during the summer of 2011 when he was an intern with the Vineyard Gazette. Work on this collection has overlapped with his graduation from Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont, where he concentrated in psychology and drama. He currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he works in and manages the Clinical and Affective Neuroscience Lab at Brown University.