actor, playwright, musician, composer, director, and lawrence arts center artistic director of performing arts

Averill has received numerous playwriting fellowships and has been selected for five professional play development symposiums including the Kennedy Center’s New Visions/New Voices and the Indianapolis Bonderman Youth Theatre Playwriting Symposium.

Many of his plays have been published by Dramatic Publishing Company, including The Pied Piper, There’s an Eyeball in My Soup, Turns, Tom Sawyer, Reliable Junk, The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor and T-Money and Wolf (with Kevin Willmott).

Among his commissions are the Kennedy Center’s Alice and Wonderland, First Stage Milwaukee’s Little Drummer Boy, and the Coterie Theatre’s Frankenstein. His children’s opera based on the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes was commissioned by the Kennedy Center, premiered in 2001 and toured nationally in 2003-04. Ric graduated with a B.F.A. in Music Composition and an M.A. in Children’s Theatre from the University of Kansas, studying with Dr. Jed Davis.

Averill directing students in the 2011 Summer Youth Theater production of “West Side Story.”