Ian August
Artistic Statement
I’ve always been a storyteller. Anyone who starts a conversation with me realizes too late they have given me an excuse to monologue. But I’m also a person with an outsized sense of self-awareness—and in the ever-changing landscape of social justice, I find myself thinking deeply about feminism, racial equity, institutional power structures, and the constant push and pull of the queer experience in modern society. What are the expectations of a politically fractured society? What do we sacrifice of ourselves to fit in?
These questions manifest in my work, driven by an absolute belief in the value of diverse experiences. I am attempting to ask—and sometimes answer—these questions with sensitivity and consideration, while at the same time leaning into the overtly theatrical—each play an attempt at marrying form and content—style and substance—in order to invent an audience experience that will be entertaining, intellectually stimulating, and emotionally fulfilling. I am attempting, as much as I can, to use my storytelling ability to tell stories of healing, redemption, and love.
Thank you for looking at my website. Enjoy!
Sincerely,
Ian August
Playwright Bio
The playwright posing unnaturally for the camera.
Ian August is a NJ based playwright and lyricist, whose works have been performed across the U.S., as well as in Canada, Australia, the UK, South Korea, and Bermuda. His plays have been developed at the PlayPenn New Play Conference, the Powerhouse Theatre Festival (Vassar / New York Stage and Film), the Great Plains Theatre Conference, Ashland New Plays Festival, Red Mountain Theatre Company, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, New Jersey Repertory Company, Wordsmyth Theatre Company, the Garry Marshall Theatre, UC Davis Dept. of Theatre and Dance, the Philadelphia Artists Collective, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the NY, Philly, and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, and elsewhere.
Mr. August is a member of the American Theatre Group’s ATG PlayLab, and a graduated member of PlayPenn’s playwriting lab, The Foundry. Several of his short plays have been published by Sam French Inc., Smith and Kraus Publishing, the One-Act Play Depot, and Pipeline / Applause Books. He was a 2019 Playwright in Residence at the William Inge Center for the Arts in Independence, Kansas, and graduate of Goddard College’s Creative Writing MFA Program. In 2021, Mr. August was the recipient of an Independent Artist Fellowship from the NJ State Council on the Arts. He is also an adjunct professor of Playwriting at Stockton University in Stockton, NJ. Mr. August lives at a boarding school with one husband, four cats, and approximately 830 teenage children.