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James Still

James Still's award-winning plays have been produced throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. He is a two-time recipient of the prestigious TCG-Pew Charitable Trusts National Theatre Artist Residency Grant (with the Indiana Repertory Theatre, where he begins his seventh season as the IRT's first-ever playwright in residence); he is also a winner of the William Inge Festival's "New Voices in American Theatre" award, the Charlotte B. Chorpenning Playwright Award for Distinguished Body of Work, and three of his plays have received the Distinguished Play Award from the American Alliance for Theatre & Education. His plays are published with Dramatic Publishing, Samuel French, Music Theatre International, and Anchorage Press.

Still's plays include Looking Over the President's Shoulder, which is one of the most produced new plays in the country. Since its world premiere at the Indiana Repertory Theatre, it has played at the famous Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.; Pasadena Playhouse in California; the American Heartland Theatre in Kansas City, Geva Theatre in Rochester, NY; Virginia Stage in Norfolk; People's Light & Theatre Company in Philadelphia; twice at Mill Mountain Theatre in Roanoke, VA; Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Boston; and Portland Stage in Maine. Upcoming productions include the Fulton Opera House in Lancaster, PA. His new play, Searching For Eden, a riff on Mark Twain's Adam and Eve short stories, which recently premiered at the American Heartland Theatre in Kansas City, was produced at Mill Mountain and next season will be produced at the Indiana Repertory Theatre. His play, He Held Me Grand premiered last season at People's Light & Theatre Company and at Indiana Rep. Still’s other plays include Amber Waves, commissioned by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.; And Then They Came for Me, translated into several languages and produced around the world; A Village Fable, commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, developed at New Visions/New Voices of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and workshopped at Robert Redford's Sundance Playwrights' Lab in Utah. A Village Fable premiered at the Honolulu Theatre for Youth and was recently produced in Switzerland at the Zurich Young People's Theatre. Hush: An Interview with America was co-commissioned and premiered by Childsplay in Tempe, AZ, and Metro Theater Company in St. Louis.

Still's solo performance piece, The Velocity of Gary (Not His Real Name) premiered in New York at the Ensemble Studio Theater and was performed across the country; it was later produced off-Broadway and in San Francisco starring Danny Pintauro.
Still’s new commissions include plays for the IRT about the 19th-century frontiersman William Conner and an adaptation of Booth Tarkington's 1899 novel The Gentleman from Indiana; a new play for the Cornerstone Theatre Company in Los Angeles as part of its four-year Faith-Based Theatre Cycle, and a new solo play, Iron Kisses, which premiers next season at People's Light. He also wrote a commissioned short play called Octophobia for the 2003 Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Still's work, which has frequently been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as numerous state arts councils, also includes credits in television and film. He has been nominated for two Emmy Awards, the Humanitas Prize, and a Television Critics Association Award. He is producer/head writer for the series "Paz," airing daily on both TLC and Discovery Kids. For Nickelodeon he was a writer and story editor for Maurice Sendak's "Little Bear" and the Bill Cosby series "Little Bill." He wrote "The Little Bear Movie" and the feature film "The Velocity of Gary."

A native of Pomona, Still graduated from the University of Kansas in 1982. He now makes his home in Venice, CA.