Part One and Two Conducted on November 25, 2024

Part Three conducted on January 15, 2025

David Ives is an American playwright whose plays have been produced on and off-Broadway, as well as regionally throughout America and around the world. He has worked in radio, film, television and the opera. He has written Young Adult novels, essays, short fiction, and humor that was published in the New Yorker, The New York Times and elsewhere. Ives has adapted French and German plays, rewriting and reimagining them for modern audiences. He adapted 33 neglected or forgotten American musicals for the popular City Center’s Encores series, for which he was named Artistic Associate in 2004, calling Encores “the best theater school I’ve ever been to.” Ives taught Master Classes in playwriting at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., he took part in the Yale School of Drama Mentor Program, was an Adjunct Professor of playwriting at Columbia University, Adjunct Lecturer in screenwriting at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and a teacher of playwriting for New Dramatists in New York City. He was Playwright-in-Residence at the Williamstown Theater Festival in 1983, a member of New Dramatists, a member, briefly, of the Tony Nominating Committee, a member of the Richard Rodgers Award Committee, and a speaker at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Among his awards are:  Outer Critics Circle Playwriting Award and Drama Desk Nomination Best Play, 1994 - ALL IN THE TIMING; New Voices Award from the William Inge Theatre Festival, 1998; Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Adaptation and Prince Prize for New York, 2006 - A FLEA IN HER EAR; Hull-Warriner Award (2009) and Lucille Lortel Award nomination 2008 -  NEW JERUSALEM; Charles MacArthur/Helen Hayes Best Play Award 2011 - THE LIAR; Sidney Kingsley Award 2011; Honorary Miss Lilly Award 2012; Cesar nomination for La Venus a la Fourrure(Roman Polanski’s film of the David Ives play VENUS IN FUR for which Ives also wrote the screenplay); Helen Hayes Award 2016 - THE METROMANIACS.  Some of his Off-Broadway productions are: CANVAS (1973), SAINT FREUD (1975), BOARDERS (1976), THE CONVERSATION (1977), LIVES AND DEATHS OF THE GREAT HARRY HOUDINI (1982), DARK HORSE (1982), THE INNER STATION (1981), WORDS, WORDS, WORDS(1987), THE LAND OF COCKAIGNE (1988), SURE THING (1988), SPEED-THE-PLAY (1989), ANCIENT HISTORY (1989), SEVEN MENUS (1989), MERE MORTALS (1990), THE RED ADDRESS (1990), PHILIP GLASS BUYS A LOAF OF BREAD (1990), VARIATIONS ON THE DEATH OF TROTSKY and FOREPLAY, OR THE ART OF THE FUGUE (1991), LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY (1993), LANGUAGE (1993), ALL IN THE TIMING: SIX ONE ACT COMEDIES (1993), ENGLISH MADE SIMPLE (1994) DON JUAN IN CHICAGO(1995), DEGAS C’EST MOI (1996), SOAP OPERA (1997), MAKE SOMEONE HAPPY (1997), CAPTIVE AUDIENCE (1999), LIVES OF THE SAINTS (1999), ARABIAN NIGHTS (2000), POLISH JOKE (2001), BOLERO (2003), ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN (2005), A FLEA IN HER EAR (2006), THE OTHER WOMAN(2006), THE BLIZZARD (2008), Yasmina Reza’s A SPANISH PLAY (tranlator)(2007), NEW JERUSALEM (2008), VENUS IN FUR (2010), THE LIAR (2010), THE SCHOOL FOR LIES (2011), THE HEIR APPARENT (2011), THE METROMANIACS (2015), THE PANTIES, THE PARTNER AND THE PROFIT: SCENES FROM THE HEROIC LIFE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS (2018), PAMELA, PAMELA (2024).  Shows produced on Broadway: Here We Are, Venus in Fur, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, Is He Dead?, The Apple Tree, Wonderful Town, Dance of the Vampires, David Copperfield’s Dreams and Nightmares. Concert Adaptations for City Center’s Encore Series included: On Your Toes, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Lost in the Stars, Anyone Can Whistle, On the Town, Applause, South Pacific, Purlie, Pardon My English, Lyrics and Lyricists: Ira Gershwin at the 92^nd Street Y, The New Moon, Wonderful Town, Du Barry Was A Lady, Out of This World.

David Ives grew up among the steel mills of Chicago’s South Side. He attended a Catholic seminary in Chicago for his four years of high school, where he was introduced to literature, theatre and poetry, and where he wrote material for the so-called Senior Mock, a show encouraging students to mock the school’s faculty. He also started writing plays in high school, but it was the touring production of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance with Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy that sent him on a decades-long journey into theatre. After graduating from Northwestern University, he had his first professional production at age 21 in a small storefront theatre in Los Angeles. He then moved to New York and worked in a number of odd jobs that included a stint at Foreign Affairs Magazine, then went on to The Yale School of Drama. Soon after, he started attracting notice with his short comedies for Manhattan Punch Line and the Ensemble Studio Theatre, but it was ALL IN THE TIMING, which premiered at Primary Stages in 1993, that put him firmly on the theatrical map and led to the shows like VENUS IN FUR for which he is best known. After working for a decade on Stephen Sondheim’s final show HERE WE ARE, which premiered in New York in 2023, he retired from the theatre.

• David Ives Website