Becky Boesen is a playwright, lyricist, director, actor, producer, storyteller, and teaching artist. Recently, Boesen toured her latest play Snowcatcher, a one-woman show commissioned by the Midwest Theatre and Lincoln Arts Council. Set against the schoolchildren’s blizzard of 1888, Snowcatcher explores issues of child bereavement following the death of a parent. Other recent notable works include Bullet, 12 B Starlight, and What The Wind Taught Me.
Boesen has written two musicals with composer David von Kampen : Catherland and most recently Puddin’ And The Grumble, which recently toured in West Virginia. Puddin’ And The Grumble is an NEA ArtWorks project that was commissioned by the Lied Center for Performing Arts, premiered at the Johnny Carson Theater in March 2016, and was the spark for a bigger community collaboration between the Lied Center, The Food Bank of Lincoln , and Clinton Elementary School, called “The Grumble Project.” Puddin’ And The Grumble was a finalist for the 2016 Richard Rodgers Award, an honor bestowed by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Boesen and von Kampen are currently collaborating on a new returner song cycle, Rock Eerie, to debut in 2019. Boesen also had the honor of penning Welcome, Pioneers, a new poem set to a commissioned song by David von Kampen in honor of the Charter Celebration at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is the co-author of Pioneer Farms, a novel that celebrates the past, present, and future of century farms and has written various other published works. Her poem, Still Mine is slated to appear in the winter 2019 edition of the Cather Review and she is an associate producer for Out of Omaha, a documentary by Executive Producer J. Cole. Boesen is currently working on a new play, titled Mr. Zanzibar, which explores the 1980’s AIDS epidemic through the eyes of an Ozarks adolescent as well as The Dream Switch, a song cycle that centers around Nebraska returners.
Boesen is also the Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer at BLIXT, and Vice President at The Grumble Project, organizations that improve the lives of people of all ages through the development of new theatrical works, community action plans, and arts education initiatives at the local, regional, and national level. Boesen has been honored as a “Playwright of Merit” by the Nebraska Arts Council and is a three-time Mayor’s Arts Award recipient in Lincoln, Nebraska as well as a past artist in residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and KANEKO. She is a producer of the ASCAP/Grow A Show New Musical Theatre Workshop and was named a “top 20 under 40” business leader by the Lincoln Journal Star. She was honored to recieve the Melba Cope Associate of 2017 by the Women and Gender Studies Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and commonly works alongside underseen communities to improve living conditions and increase opportunities at the local level. She currently is an adjunct faculty member at Nebraska Wesleyan University, and a consultant for the Nebraska Community Foundation, working alongside Nebraska hometowns to lift local arts abundance.
Boesen is a member of ASCAP and the Dramatists’ Guild of America.