User:Betongmandarin/Erin Kamler

Erin Kamler is a writer-composer with a specific interest in writing musicals based on memoir. A native of Ann Arbor, MI, Erin began performing in musicals at age nine, started her own production company at age ten and went on to write, compose and produce over fifteen musicals by age eighteen. A three-time winner of Stephen Sondheim's Young Playwright's Festival, Erin's plays have been staged at The Joseph Papp Public Theater and Playwright's Horizons, and she won the 1994 University of Michigan Hopwood Award for playwriting. Her musical Runway 69 is currently in development at New Dramatists where it won the 2008 Frederick Loewe Award, and her musical ''Divorce! The Musical recently made its world premiere at Los Angeles’ Hudson Theater where it garnered The LA Times’ Critic’s Choice, Backstage West’s Critic’s Pick, an LA Weekly GO and was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and Entertainment Tonight.''

Recording and performance

Erin has recorded three albums, The Street is not a Woman (1998), Mantra Girl: Truth (2002) and Mantra Girl: Trinity (2005). As a recording artist, Erin has performed to audiences in India, Japan, Mexico, Italy, Turkey and throughout the United States with her album material and Kundalini Yoga Instructional DVD’s. As a vocal instructor, Erin has worked in the public and private school setting and leads arts education projects at the Development Education Project for Daughters and Communities, a non-governmental organization working to prevent child trafficking in Northern Thailand.

Academic projects

A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Erin is currently pursuing a master’s degree in International Public Diplomacy at The University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication/ School of International Relations with a focus on Southeast Asia. Erin recently presented her paper Thai Nationalism and the Crisis of the Colonized Self at the South and Southeast Asian Association for the Study of Religion and Culture’s 3rd annual conference in Bali, Indonesia. In October, 2009 she will present her paper, National Identity, The Shan and Child Trafficking in Northern Thailand: The Case of D.E.P.D.C. at the International Conference on Shan Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.

''Musicals

Divorce: The Musical

Book, Music and Lyrics by Erin Kamler 

"Hilarious and tuneful... rare to find a comedic musical in which the trenchancy of the social commentary is as engaging as the songs," Les Spindle, Frontiers L.A. Magazine

"Erin Kamler's witty and entertaining new musical satire takes apart almost every emotional phase of a marital breakup, including the horrors of dating and the hollows of rebound sex, and sets it to chirpy and wry songs that feature some sophisticated musical juxtapositions and harmonies." Steven Leigh Morris, LA Weekly

"Erin Kamler... skillfully negotiates her slippery subject and scores a theatrical hat-trick", F. Kathleen Foley, L.A. Times

"Erin Kamler's lyrics are universally real, hitting home… A remarkably fun show," Kate West, RAVE LA Times Reader Review

"Kamler's lyrics are funny as all get-out and perceptive as well... The show is first-rate all the way, " Steven Stanley, Stage Scene LA

"Every divorce should be this fun," Ophelia Chong, KCET

"A rollicking crowd-pleaser!" The Tolucan Times

Runway 69

Winner of the 2008 Frederick Loewe Award, presented by New Dramatists. A new musical by Erin Kamler and Carson Kreitzer about that infamous strip club, set on the eve of the Times Square Clean-up.

The Jews of Calabasas

A forthcoming musical about a young Jewish woman who comes into the community of Calabasas and, through funny and poignant encounters with the people she meets, gains a deeper understanding of what it means to be a Jewish woman in America today. At turns hilarious and deeply moving, The Jews of Calabasas explores issues of identity, femininity, religion and the ways we all search for meaning in our lives.

Other upcoming projects

These include Khmer, a musical set in modern Cambodia and H.E.L.P., a play about child trafficking in Thailand.