
RICHARD HELLESEN
Playwright/Dramaturg
About
Richard Hellesen is the author of a number of plays for adults and children. Among the former
are Kingdom (premiered at the Denver Center Theatre Company; recipient of the Barrie
Stavis Playwriting Award from the National Theatre Conference, and a finalist in the
PEN USA West 2000 Literary Awards); Once In Arden (originally produced by South
Coast Repertory, and the recipient of a Julie Harris Playwriting Award from the Beverly
Hills Theatre Guild); Moonshadow (six regional theatre productions; awarded the Dennis
McIntyre Playwriting Award by the Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays); an
adaptation of Frank Norris’ The Octopus (semi-finalist, 2011 O’Neill National
Playwrights Conference); and four plays for Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, where he
is an Associate Artist: the full-length Necessary Sacrifices, commissioned and premiered
in 2012, and the one-acts One Destiny, The Road From Appomattox, and Investigation:
Detective McDevitt. Also for Ford’s, he co-wrote the adaptation of the Frank Wildhorn
musical Freedom’s Song, which premiered in March 2015, and was privileged to write the
script for Now He Belongs to the Ages, the event commemorating the 150th anniversary of the
Lincoln assassination. With the late composer David De Berry he wrote the book for the
musical A Cappella (premiered at the Sacramento Theatre Company), and a widely-produced
musical adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. His two-dozen produced short plays
include five finalists for the Actors Theatre of Louisville Heideman Award: Four One-
Hundredths, Layin’ Off the Lizard-Boy, Ethnic Cleansing, Teardown, and A Speedy And Public Trial,
all produced at City Theatre in Miami (among others). His one-act Dos Corazones received a
Theatre Los Angeles Ovation Award writing nomination, and appears in “Best Ten-Minute
Plays 2012”, published by Smith & Kraus. Two additional full-length plays, Compelled and All
She Wrote, are currently in progress.
Mr. Hellesen’s plays for young audiences include a version of The Twelve Dancing
Princesses (published by Samuel French), The Emperor’s New Clothes (People’s Light &
Theatre Company), and an adaptation of Esther Forbes’ novel Johnny Tremain (B Street
Theatre, Sacramento). With Grammy-winning composer Michael Silversher he has
written a musical adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (part of
South Coast Repertory’s inaugural Family Series in 2004, with a revised version playing
at Imagination Stage in Bethesda, Maryland in 2011), as well as eleven Educational
Touring musicals for SCR, three of which--Face 2 Face, My Mom’s Dad, and Birds of A
Feather--were subsequently produced at the Sundance Children’s Theatre in Utah. Face
2 Face and another tour show, The Pride of Weedpatch Camp, were selected as workshop
study plays by the Lincoln Center Institute’s Rural Arts Education program in 2006 and
2007, through the William Inge Center for the Arts in Independence, Kansas. Along with
composer/lyricist Joy Sikorski, their musical adaptation of Lois Lowry’s young adult novel
Gathering Blue premiered in summer 2017 at the Gretna Theatre in Pennsylvania.
A member of the Dramatists Guild, Mr. Hellesen was an invited attendee at the Theatre
Communications Group National Conferences in 2005 and 2007, a guest panelist at the
William Inge Theatre Festival in 2003, and playwright-in-residence at the Inge Center in 2009
and 2012. Additionally, he assists with one-on-one dramaturgy for the Playwrights Center in
Minneapolis, and has worked in the literary departments of several theatres, including
Berkeley Repertory Theatre, South Coast Repertory, and B Street Theatre in Sacramento,
where he makes his home.

Read an interview, by Adam Szymkowicz

