The Playwrights
ALLISON ENGEL has been a reporter for the Des Moines Tribune, San Jose Mercury and Pacific News Service, and a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. She was a speechwriter for former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack and lieutenant governor Sally Pederson and president of the Des Moines Playhouse.
She and her twin Margaret wrote the play Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, which had its world premiere at Philadelphia Theatre Company with Kathleen Turner in the title role. Kathleen continued in productions of the play at Arena Stage, the Geffen Playhouse and Berkeley Rep. Other actresses have starred in productions at dozens of other theaters around the country.
The Engels’ second play, Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End, has had more than 80 productions across the U.S. and Canada, and was filmed by Actors Studio of Louisville. Both plays were published by Samuel French.
Allison has been the director of communications at the University of Southern California and associate director of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, where she now is a Fellow. She holds an MA in screenwriting from USC, and continues to write for the university.
Earlier, she co-wrote Food Finds: America’s Best Local Foods and the People Who Produce Them with her twin, and adapted the book into a show on Food Network, where it ran for seven years.
MARGARET ENGEL directs the Alicia Patterson Journalism Foundation and was the managing editor of the Newseum. She was a reporter for the Washington Post, Des Moines Register and Lorain Journal, and was a Nieman fellow at Harvard.
She and her twin wrote the play Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, which has had 60 productions to date around the country. They are expanding their 10-minute play “Down There,” a tragicomedy about women’s reproductive choices, into a full-length production.
In 2017, the two authors wrote a book with Reise Moore, ThriftStyle: The Ultimate Bargain Shopper’s Guide to Smart Fashion, that included input from several costume designers. Earlier, she and her husband, Bruce Adams, wrote three editions of a Fodor’s travel guide to America’s baseball parks.
She has served on the board of Theatre Washington/Helen Hayes Awards, the Fund for Investigative Journalism and chairs the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism awards board. She is a member of the Nieman Foundation board and of Spotlight/DC, a journalism nonprofit focusing on local news.
Allison and Peggy grew up on Franklin Street in Chagrin Falls with their parents, Jack and Eleanor, and three siblings. Their mother was a local librarian. As a volunteer, their father led efforts to pass Chagrin school bond levies and helped build sets at CVLT. The twins, who took classes at CVLT as youngsters, are in the Chagrin Falls High School’s Alumni Association Achievement Hall of Fame along with their brother, Jonathan. Their sisters, Joan and Melissa, appeared in the 1956 CVLT production of “The Teahouse of the August Moon.”
