Kornhauser, Barry

Barry Kornhauser, theatre for youth playwright, dramaturg, educator and director, is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he majored in anthropology, psychology and education special studies.

Kornhauser has been playwright-in-residence and director of theatre for young audiences at the Family Theatre, Fulton Opera House, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he has taught theatre arts from pre-school through university level since 1982.

Kornhauser is the founder and driving force behind the Fulton's Youtheatre program, which has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts as a national model for providing arts education for at-risk, disabled and disadvantaged teens. The Youtheatre project was recognized with the Coming Up Taller award at a White House ceremony by the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities as a top arts-education national initiative in 2008.

Play Awards:

Kornhauser's plays have received awards and recognitions for tackling difficult social issues. He developed several plays addressing teen social issues, and worked with at-risk teens to write 100 Monkeys in Pursuit of An Elusive Butterfly in 2004.

He is also recognized for adopting complicated writing techniques. This Is Not a Pipe Dream is a non-linear play written for teens to perform. Cyrano, his adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac, is written in verse and was produced by Michael Kahn at the renowned Shakespeare Theatre in Washington D.C., and was the season opener for the Fulton's 2000-2001 season.

Kornhauser was also commissioned by the Kennedy Centers Theater for Young Audiences to create an original program based on the songs of legendary Broadway composer Frank Loesser, which is titled, Of Mice and Manhattan, in 2009.

As a playwright and director, Kornhauser's plays have been developed and recognized in national playwriting forums, and he has worked with internationally recognized productions of the San Diego Theatre of the World Festival, the New Play Festival at Provincetown Playhouse in New York City, and the Smithsonian Institution. The Gilgamesh Treatment, was one of two plays commissioned by a special endowment of the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, Florida, in 1990.

He has served as a dramaturg for the Denver Theatre Center; a panelist for three Pennsylvania arts councils, the Heinz Endowments, and the National Education Association; a play adjudicator for the American Alliance for Theatre Education (AATE) and a Luminary Guest Artist for the Wrinkle Writing Program at the University of New Mexico.

Kornhauser is the Pennsylvania state representative for the AATE and has served as chair of the AATE Winifred Ward committee, which provides annual scholarships to a graduate-level scholar of demonstrated intellectual and artistic ability in child drama/theatre. He has been a Playwrights in Our Schools Residency Project mentor, which enables award-winning playwrights to develop works-in-progress in AATE-member secondary schools. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, a professional association of playwrights, composers, lyricists and librettists. He sits on the board of Theatre Youth Association (TYA/USA) and writes the Epilogue column for the TYA/USA Incite/Insight magazine. He is on the Pennsylvania Department of Education Standards-Aligned System Model Curriculum committee, and serves on the Pennsylvania Cultural Access Project.

Kornhauser was the first recipient of the Pennsylvania Educational Theatre award for Outstanding Service by an Individual to the Commonwealth in 1994. He was the U.S. nominee for the ASSITEJ International Award for Artistic Excellence in 2008. Kornhauser received the Charlotte B. Chorpenning Cup, which honors the body of work for nationally known writers of outstanding plays for youth, from the Theatre Youth Association in 2009.

From the guide to the Barry Kornhauser Papers, 1980-2010, (Arizona State University Libraries Child Drama Collection)