From the law to Broadway, Ken Ludwig's journey brings him back to York

In the early years, Ken Ludwig would get up at 4 a.m. and write.

And write and write and write, hundreds of pages.

He had a day job, as a young lawyer at Steptoe and Johnson, a large, venerable law firm in Washington, D.C. That had been his career trajectory, earning his law degree at Harvard and a specialized master’s in international law at Cambridge.

He had moved to Washington, where he still lives, because his older brother, Eugene, lived there, and they are close, and because Steptoe and Johnson recruited him when he graduated from Harvard Law. (Eugene, who earned his law degree at Yale, served as Comptroller of the Currency during the Clinton administration in the 1990s.)

“I wanted to be a playwright,” Ludwig said. “I wanted to be in the theater. But I had to put food on the table.”

It seems odd that an aspiring playwright – one who would later earn international acclaim – would list lawyer as his day job, unlike many aspiring artists who wait tables or serve coffee or pour drinks.

Working at Steptoe and Johnson wouldn’t seem conducive to chasing that dream, the large firm notorious for asking its lawyer to put in long hours performing grueling, detailed work. “I let them know I wouldn’t do that,” he said.

He would write, long-hand on legal pads – which he still does – until it was time to go to the law office and wrangle with the complexities of the law.

He would buy Writer’s Market, a book published annually listing agents and publishers interested in submissions, and would send plays off to those who were said to be interested in accepting unsolicited manuscripts. (Always including the SASE – self-addressed, stamped envelope – permitting the publisher to return the work with a rejection letter.)

He got “lots and lots of rejections.”

Finally, a pair of producers accepted one of his works – “Abelard and Heloise,” a romantic drama based on the 12th Century love affair between Peter Abelard and Heloise d’Argenteuil.

The play was produced in Washington and had a stint off-Broadway. “It was reviewed in The New York Times,” Ludwig recalled. “It was in the back pages, and it was a short review, but it was a good review. I felt very validated.”

He said, “It was a rush. Imagine being able to do the one thing you want to do in life.”

That began his career in the theater, a dream that had begun in York, Pa.

‘So appropriate’

This weekend, Ludwig will visit the Belmont Theater – formerly York Little Theater – for the theater’s reopening, billed as An Evening With Ken Ludwig’s “Dear Jack, Dear Louise.” The playwright will attend a reception Friday and deliver remarks leading up to a production of the play, a love letter to his parents based on, well, the love letters they exchanged while his father Jacob Ludwig was a captain in the Army during World War II and his mother Louise was an aspiring actress living in New York.

“It is such an honor to have him join us for the beginning of the 94th season at The Belmont,” Lyn Bergdoll, executive director of Creative York, which operates the theater, wrote in an email. “To have a York native be considered the most successful playwright of his generation is amazing. To present his play about his parents, who were well known in York, is so appropriate.”

An inspiring teacher

Ludwig’s father was a doctor, and his mother, Louise Rabiner, was an aspiring actress. They met as pen pals, through letters they traded while Jacob served in the Army from 1942 to 1945.

His mother, growing up in Brooklyn, dreamed of being an actress, a dream that was derailed when she wed Ludwig’s father and moved to York, where he took a job at York Hospital.

Louise still worked at her craft, performing in several productions at what was then called York Little Theater on Belmont Street. Ludwig recalled sitting in the third row with his brother, watching his mother perform on stage at the community theater.

That was among the things that inspired him to seek a career in the theater.

The other inspiration came from one of his teachers at York Suburban Senior High School, a legendary English teacher named Tom Hummel, who taught at the school from 1962 to his retirement in 2001. He was one of those teachers who left a lasting impression, even decades later − a teacher who gently challenged and encouraged students.

Hummel, in addition to chairing the school’s English department and coaching the swim team, also ran the drama department. He gave Ludwig a chance to direct a production of “Time Out for Ginger,” a comedy about a girl who wants to try out for her school’s football team, which Ludwig described as “a generic Broadway play.” (The original production featured a young Steve McQueen among its cast.)

That experience inspired Ludwig. “Mr. Hummel really made a difference,” he said.

After graduating from Suburban, Ludwig went to Haverford College, where he studied Shakespeare and earned a degree in music theory and composition. He went on to study music with Leonard Bernstein at Harvard, where he earned his law degree. While at Harvard, he was accepted at Cambridge and, during his first year there, he majored in English literature, changing to the law program to appease his parents, who thought he needed to learn a profession.

Even as he practiced law, though, he dreamed of being a playwright.

It seems to have worked out.

‘America’s preeminent comic playwright’

Ludwig’s first Broadway play, “Lend Me a Tenor,” which was produced in London’s West End in 1986 and on Broadway in 1989, won two Tony Awards and was called “one of the classic comedies of the 20th Century” by the Washington Post. (Legendary theater composer and producer Andrew Lloyd Webber produced the play in London.)

His second Broadway production, “Crazy for You,” an original musical that draws inspiration from the works of George and Ira Gershwin, won three Tonys and ran for more than five years on the Great White Way.

A couple of dozen other works followed, his plays being performed worldwide, in more than 30 countries and in 20 different languages, earning Ludwig the honor of being called “the most performed playwright of his generation” and “America’s preeminent comic playwright.”

His plays have earned seemingly dozens of awards, including an Edgar Allen Poe Award for best mystery for his comic mystery “The Game’s Afoot.”

A ‘very personal’ play

“Dear Jack, Dear Louise” is among his most personal plays.

“It was very personal,” he said. “It was written in a way I’ve never written before.”

The play is told in the letters exchanged between his father and mother during their courtship. “They met during World War II; that’s all true,” Ludwig said.

But he had to make up the letters. “I never saw the letters,” he said. “When I thought of the idea (for the play), the letters didn’t exist anymore.”

His brother believes that their mother discarded the letters to protect her children because of their intimate nature.

“One of the regrets I have in life is not going to my parents and asking them what it was like growing up,” he said. “There are so many things we don’t know about our parents’ lives, but we don’t ask them.”

‘I love York’

Ludwig has traveled around the world for his work.

But he always loves visiting his hometown. The last time he was in York was to attend a performance at the Belmont Theater. He also had a chance to visit Art Kahley, who was band director at Suburban when he played trombone in the high school band.

“Living in D.C., it’s a big city,” he said. “I live in a part that looks like a more suburban area, but it’s a city. York wasn’t that. York was a town and I loved that.”

He said, “I love York. I loved growing up in York.”