Andrew Black
Bitten by a Boomslang
Saturday, June 16 at 7:30pm
Andrew Black was raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, and graduated from IU in Bloomington with a degree in Radio/TV. This degree led to a career writing scripts for corporate training programs. His first play Porn Yesterday told the story of a porno star who wants to change his life. It was produced in San Diego in 2003; other productions followed. (Porn was co-written with Patricia Milton.)
A screwball comedy, Strange Bedfellows, came next, as did a murder mystery--It’s Murder, Mary! “Hilarious, high-spirited fun for everyone. . . Irresistible!” said Lee Hartgrave in his column, Beyond Chron. (Patricia Milton was the co-writer for these two plays as well.)
Having moved to San Francisco, partially to pursue his personal vision of dating men and not women, Andrew began to write plays on his own. He joined a Bay Area company (PlayGround) which specializes in ten-minute plays. Topics included gay penguins trying to get onto Noah’s Ark and an ill-fated romance between the action figure G.I. Joe and Barbie’s long-time boyfriend Ken.
The New Works of Merit contest selected Andrew’s Another Dude’s Slingbacks as its winner in 2009. The Second Weekend in September premiered in 2010 in San Jose, California. Numerous productions of these plays and of various short form plays have taken place across the country.
Andrew completed his MFA in playwriting at Ohio University (Athens, Ohio) in 2012 and returned to Indianapolis at that time. He has been successfully teaching and developing new playwrights at the Indiana Writers Center. Many of his students have gone on to have their work performed at venues across the country. Andrew has produced two student showcases of short plays at Indy Fringe in Indianapolis.
His thesis play, Puppet Man, is set at the North Central Correctional Institute in Marion, Ohio. Puppet Man is inspired by real-life events about a group of inmates who start a puppet theater. Puppet Man was produced by Theater on the Square in Indianapolis, Indiana, in January of 2017. He is also the author of Bitten by a Boomslang, which looks at humanitarian efforts in the African country of Sierra Leone.