Ken Green: Meet the Playwright

In anticipation of the fifth episode, coming out on Monday, November 6, let's get to know the playwright of Sixteen Inch, Chicago transplant Ken Green.

Ken is a Chicago transplant, and his play Sixteen Inch pretty much takes you to a specific block in Chicago that you will feel that you can locate solely by walking around and listening to accents. The play uses the members of a softball team to illustrate a surprisingly full range of characters, issues, and the changing landscape of a city in transition.

Ken was chosen for the Company One PlayLab unit in 2016 and was selected to be a PlayLab Fellow in 2017, where he continued to develop Sixteen Inch and which culminated in a reading.

A newspaper reporter and editor, Ken started off in the poetry slam scene, becoming a member of four Chicago teams which competed in the National Poetry Slam. Several years ago he turned his attention to fiction and essay writing, as well as playwriting. In 2006 his placed third in the Goodman Theater's David Mamet Write-Alike Contest with a somewhat profane Mametized version of "The Wizard of Oz." He is a lifelong Chicago White Sox fans who finds his baseball patience being tested living in Boston.

Ken also helps run Story Club Boston, a storytelling series which began in Chicago and brought to Boston by Ken in 2013 in which people from all walks of life can tell nonfiction stories whether from memory or from a script. There are now affiliated chapters in Chicago, Boston, and Minneapolis. 

For more information, check out Ken''s website: kengreen.weebly.com and New Play Exchange Profile.

He has not, as of this writing, renounced his allegiance to Chicago sports teams.

Photo courtesy of Company One.