Theatre--Performance (Playwright Profile)

This is the next in the series of playwright profiles, introducing you to the playwrights associated with the ART New Works Festival, which will open on Friday, the 22nd of June at Theatre 810.

This is Matthew Ivan Bennett, author of IN THE OPEN, which will be read on Saturday, June 23rd at 6:30 pm.

Matthew Ivan Bennett is the Resident Playwright of Plan-B Theatre Company, with whom he's premiered several plays, including Di Esperienza, Block 8 and Mesa Verde—the latter of which was nominated for a Steinberg award by the American Theatre Critics Association. Three radio plays of his, Alice,Frankenstein, and Lavender & Exile, have been broadcast nationally through KUER and XM, and Frankenstein received the Best Feature Program award from the Utah Broadcasters Association (2009). His short works have been at Salt Lake's Wasatch Theatre Company, in Chicago's Circle Theatre, Hunger Artists Theatre Ensemble in Los Angeles, at Rising Sun Performance Company in New York, at Monkeyman Productions in Toronto, and at the Source Festival in Washington DC. His poetry has been published with the Western Humanities Review, Mixer Publishing, and he's a 2012 Honorable Mentionee in the Writers of the Future contest for Science Fiction and Fantasy. His new dysfunctional family comedy, A Night with the Family, will premiere at the Omaha Community Playhouse in 2013. Matt earned a Bachelors' of Theatre Arts at Southern Utah University.