Playwright - Brian Burgess Clark

Local Graduate becomes Bicentennial Playwright:

Brian Burgess Clark caught the theatre bug early as a high school student in Worthington. He acted in play productions and as a senior decided to try his hand at crafting a play of his own. It was a musical play for children titled "No More Green Beans." He enlisted the school’s choral music teacher, Joel Haney, to assist with the music and presented the results to his drama teacher, Bronwynn Hopton. She produced it. Brian hasn’t stopped since. In 2000, his PBS series, "(Pets), Part of the Family" was nominated for an Emmy. His "Ivory Alphabet" won the Julie Harris Award the same year. In 1996, he took the prestigious William Inge Theatre Festival "New Voice in American Theatre Award." He has also won the Vermont Playwright’s award in 1999 for "The Touch," and the National Association of Speech and Dramatic Arts "Best Play" award, the Mary Roberts Rinehart award for playwriting and a special services achievement award from the US Army for his play "Purple Hearts."

A graduate of the University of Hawaii, Brian is now a full time playwright, pausing only to give master classes in play writing and spending his summers as director of the Perry-Mansfield School of the Arts theatre program in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Thus, it came as no professional surprise to him, and seemed a logical choice to his formative mentor Bronwynn Hopton, when the City of Worthington turned to him to write the bicentennial play for the summer of 2003. The play, "The Scioto Company," named for the company formed by James Kilbourne and the 99 settlers who founded Worthington, was written in 2001 and 2002. After studying volumes of historical documentation, Brian focused his play on Kilbourne family life. Steered by Kilbourne’s energetic vision, the play is vitalized by the humanity of its characters and enlightened by public and private events that occur during its scope.

"The Scioto Company" home page

Director-Designer Team

Performance Schedule