Allan Bates

Allan Bates, the author of three successfully produced full-length children’s plays and one yet-to-be produced, has forty years’ experience as a playwright. For twenty-five years he directed the Creative Writing program at Northeastern Illinois University. He taught playwriting at Victory Gardens Theatre and was Playwright-in-Residence at Raven Theatre, both leading Chicago theatres. He has authored more than thirty full-length and one-act plays produced throughout Chicago, as well as in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. His plays have won Bailiwick Theatre’s annual new play award, an Illinois Arts Council $1000 Excellence Award, and acceptance at the University of Michigan Experimental Theatre Festival. Two of his plays have been translated and produced in foreign languages. Recently he has branched out into new directions, including screenwriting and directing a Shakespeare workshop at the Federal Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. He is a current member of The Dramatists Guild and The Playwrights Center.