Bio

ERIN KAMLER'S Divorce! The Musical, for which she wrote the book, music and lyrics, made its 2009 world premiere at the Hudson Theater in Los Angeles where it garnered the LA Times’ Critic’s Choice, Backstage West’s Critic’s Pick, won the 2009 Los Angeles Ovation Award for Best Book, Music and Lyrics for an Original Musical, the 2010 Backstage Garland Award for Best Playwriting, the 2010 Backstage Garland Award for Best Musical Score, the LA Weekly Awards for Best Director and Musical Director, and was nominated for the 2010 LA Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Original Score. A three-time winner of Stephen Sondheim's Young Playwright's Festival (1991, 1992, 1994), Erin's plays have been staged at The Public Theater and Playwright's Horizons, and she won the 1994 University of Michigan Hopwood Award for playwriting. Her musical Runway 69 is currently in development at New Dramatists where it won the 2008 Frederick Loewe Award for Best Musical. Erin is currently at work on a new musical.

As a recording artist, Erin has performed to audiences in India, Japan, Mexico, Italy, Turkey and throughout the United States with her albums “Mantra Girl: Truth" (2002) "Mantra Girl: Trinity" (2005), and Kundalini Yoga Instructional DVD’s (2003). Her music can be heard in New Line Cinema's "A Man Apart," WB's "The Gilmore Girls," the sci-fi mini-series "Earthsea," on the E-Style channel, and on numerous albums, commercials and films. As a vocal instructor, she has taught in public and private school settings in New York and Los Angeles.

Erin is a doctoral student at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where she studies culture and human rights discourses in Southeast Asia. Erin was awarded an A.F.S. scholarship at age sixteen to study abroad in Bangkok, an experience that fostered her interest in the Thai language, culture and politics. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Erin recently completed a master's degree in Public Diplomacy at USC's Annenberg School for Communication/ School of International Relations in 2010. In 2009 she conducted research at the Development Education Program for Daughters and Communities, an NGO in Northern Thailand dedicated to preventing child trafficking.  In 2010 she traveled to Thailand and Cambodia in partnership with the U.S. Department of State and USC's Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, to conduct research on the use of technology to combat trafficking in persons. Erin's academic work has been published in journals in Thailand, India and the U.S., and she presents lectures about human trafficking throughout the world. Erin is currently working to synthesize her artistic work with her interest in Communications and International Relations through the study and practice of entertainment education in Thailand.