Will Power
Playwright, Performer, and Educator, New York, NY
Will Power is an award-winning playwright, performer, and educator. His two-act play, Fetch Clay, Make Man, had its world premiere at the McCarter Theatre Center in 2010 (upcoming New York run 2012). Power’s adaptation of the Greek tragedy Seven Against Thebes, retitled The Seven, enjoyed a successful Off-Broadway run at the New York Theater Workshop, and called everything from “brilliant” (The Village Voice), to "exhilarating" (USA Today), to “a spectacular offering to the theater Gods” (Time Out New York). Will Power’s acclaimed solo show, Flow, has been described as “astounding” (Curtain Up) and “theater with the refreshing aroma of originality” (New York Times). Mr. Power’s numerous awards include a USA Prudential Fellowship, a Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical, an Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award, the TCG Peter Zeisler Memorial Award, a Jury Award for Best Theatre Performance at the HBO US Comedy Arts Festival, a Drama Desk Award nomination, and the Trailblazer Award from The National Black Theater Network. Will has had the privilege of working with some of the great theatre luminaries of the 20th and 21st century, including Des McAnuff, Emily Mann, Danny Hoch and Bill T. Jones, and his plays and performances have been seen in some of the world’s greatest venues including Lincoln Center (New York), The Sydney Opera House (Australia), The Battersea Arts Centre (London), Royce Hall (Los Angeles), and many others.
Mr. Power is respected across the globe as a skilled and provocative teaching artist, whose work with young people from throughout the U.S. to Tanzania, has fueled his professional artistic practice. He has worked extensively with teens in developing collaborative projects which often incorporate issues and priorities stemming from the communities with which he is partnering.
He spent his early years as a key member in two critically acclaimed avant-garde music groups, Midnight Voices and the Omar Sosa Sextet. With these groups Power recorded and toured extensively. More recently, Will Power has traveled on multiple occasions to teach Hip Hop lyricism and theatre across the globe. He was a guest of the U.S. State Department on four separate occasions, traveling to South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, and Turkmenistan. On these trips and others, Mr. Power taught community workshops in shantytowns, worked with poets in former regimes of the Soviet Union, and lectured at various universities. Power’s numerous film and television appearances include The Steven Colbert Report (Comedy Central), Drylongso (Sundance Film Festival), and Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason (PBS).