Joe Gulla (born July 23, 1964) is an American playwright, actor and reality television participant. [1] [2] [3] He is best known for the autobiographical monologues that he writes and performs for the theater. He is a regular performer at Feinstein's/54 Below and Joe's Pub at The Public Theater. [4] An award-winning playwright, his plays have been performed Off-Broadway, nationally and internationally. [5]
Gulla is a native of Bronx, New York. He is a 1982 graduate of Cardinal Spellman High School. Upon graduation, he attended the State University at Albany, but eventually transferred to Fordham University at Rose Hill. His post-graduate work includes study at Fordham University and Circle Repertory in New York City. [6]
Gulla is a regular performer at Feinstein's/54 Below and Joe's Pub at The Public Theater. His play, “My Darling Love” won the 2019 Christopher Hewitt Award for Drama. His plays, "The Bronx Queen”, “Garbo” and “Gay.Porn.Mafia” won the 2016, 2017 and 2018 NYC Downtown Urban Arts Festival "Audience Award”, respectively. As an actor, Joe performed in San Francisco's “Tony & Tina's Wedding” for many years and Off-Broadway's “My Big Gay Italian Wedding”. He also starred on NBC's LOST, one of television's first adventure reality series. [7]
His best known work, Bronx Queen Trilogy is based on his experience growing up as a gay boy in the Bronx. [8] The Bronx Queen, first in the series, won the 2016 Downtown Urban Arts Festival "Audience Award" for Gulla's sold-out performance at Joe's Pub at The Public Theater. [9] "The Bronx Queen" was also awarded Best Comedic Script and Most Popular Show at NYC Theater Row's 2012 and 2013 United Solo Theatre Festival, respectively. [10] [11] Faggy at 50, second in the series, was awarded Best One-Man Show at NYC Theater Row's 2014 United Solo Theatre Festival. [12] Daddy, the series' final installment had its World Premiere at NYC Theater Row's 2015 United Solo Theatre Festival. [13] Gulla won the 2015 United Solo Award for Best Comedian for his performance. [14]
REEL WOOD, a short play written by Gulla, had its World Premiere at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in June 2015. It was also selected by NYC's Village Playwrights to be performed in their "Re-Inventing Family" series commemorating Gay Pride. [15] [16] Gulla's play, Knock Off!, had its world premiere in Houston, TX at Theatre Southwest. [17] Christmas Caroline had its World Premiere at Studio C Theatre, Hollywood, CA in November 2015. [18] His play, Gayfever had its World Premiere at the Funky Little Theatre Company in March 2016. [19] "Sleeping With The Fish" by Joe Gulla opened the Village Playwrights' "Gay Pride and Prejudice" series in June 2016. [20] In June 2016, Gulla's play, Fall and Rise had its World Premiere at the Carrolwood Player's "One Act Weekend" in Tampa, Florida. [21] Later that month, Gulla's Fall and Rise premiered at the 2016 Hollywood Fringe Festival. [22] Fall and Rise was awarded "Best Play" in 2016 at the Acadia University Mini Fest in Nova Scotia, CN. [23]
Gulla was a contestant on the NBC adventure reality series Lost in 2001. The show followed three teams of two as they made their way from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia back to the United States. [24] He played the role of "Frankie" in Off-Broadway's long-running hit, My Big Gay Italian Wedding . [25]
The Advocate named Gulla its "Anti-Bullying Hero" in 2012. [26]
Gulla is a member of the Dramatists Guild. [27]
Gulla lived in Rome, Italy from 2007 to 2010, his play Garbo was based on an unrequited love affair experienced while living there. Garbo was selected to be part of the New York City's Times Square International Theater Festival in 2012. [28] Garbo was also produced at New York's Cherry Lane Theater as part of the 2017 Downtown Urban Arts Festival. It won the "Audience Award" for that performance. [29]
Joe's solo performances are presented in the tradition of (and homage to) monologist, Spalding Gray. This artistic choice is explained in the Bistro Awards review of "The Bronx Queen". [57] "Gulla delivered the entire show in Spalding Gray fashion: seated at a desk, reading the script aloud from a binder. At first I wondered whether this was such a great idea. Clearly Gulla knows (or nearly knows) the text by heart. But it turned out to be the right tack. There is a literary quality to Gulla’s storytelling. Were he to stand center stage or wander about—speaking his “writerly” text in stream-of-consciousness, off-the-cuff fashion—the effect might seem stilted. Gulla's strengths as a performer were evident even within the limited acting sphere he allowed himself, perched behind that table. His hand gestures were simple but emphatic, giving him an authoritative quality. He modulated his somewhat raspy voice subtly to take on the roles of the various characters in the monologue, but also to give his story shape and his sentiments depth." [58] "His performances succeed largely because Joe Gulla comes off as such a warm and wise storyteller, brimming with good will and honest reflection." [59]
Broadway World elaborates: <ref "Joe Gulla : Broadway World".</ref>"Joe Gulla is a monologist in the tradition of Spalding Gray or Whoopi Goldberg or John Leguizamo. His style is simple. He sits at a desk (in this case a desk made of two music stands) and just reads. But it is story theatre of the highest order. His show THE BRONX QUEEN which opened last night at 54 Below, is about the traumatic, and often hysterical, experiences he had growing up gay in the Bronx. It is peopled with characters from his Italian family and their Puerto Rican friends. The Bronx Queen, by the way, is a fishing trawler that figures in many of the scenes. The story follows the ill-fated vessel from birth to death in a tragic accident and to eventual rescue. In short, it's a metaphor for the life of most gay kids who deal with families who love them but don't quite understand them, and about the peace and love they eventually find." [60]
THE BRONX QUEEN as reviewed in Broadway World [61] THE BRONX QUEEN has many amazing episodes. My favorite was a story about young Joe and his friend Eva, who take revenge on a neighborhood woman by creating a graffiti mural in chalk that says STUPID FAY on the side of the bathroom in the local park. They regret their prank as it doesn't rain for 22 days and the artwork becomes a topic of local curiosity. It is a wry story that in some roundabout twists leads to a chance meeting with that greatest of graffiti artists, Jean-Michel Basquiat. I was also beside myself with laughter during the stories about Gulla's grandmother, Nanny, who was so devoted to a particular movie theatre, she even continued to go there after they converted it to a porn theatre. She was that dedicated. There's also a story about a mortifying moment aboard The Bronx Queen with his grandfather that is too good to give away. And those are only three of the dozens of stories that make THE BRONX QUEEN such a charming, outrageous, touching, gratifying evening. Joe Gulla is a master storyteller. [62]
Angelo Parra is an American playwright. He was born in Manhattan and grew up in the Bronx, New York City. After graduating from Fordham University, his career included work as a reporter/photographer, public relations professional, politician, free-lance writer, and PR and journalism teacher at New York University before turning to theatre in 1986. His first produced play, Casino, was presented at T. Schreiber Studio, and won a 1989 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship in Playwriting and an Arts International grant.
Robert Frederic Schenkkan Jr. is an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1992 for his play The Kentucky Cycle and his play All the Way earned the 2014 Tony Award for Best Play. He has three Emmy nominations and one WGA Award.
Peter Parnell is an American Broadway and Off-Broadway playwright, television writer, and children's book author. Parnell is also Vice-President of the Dramatists Guild of America, the professional association of playwrights, composers, lyricists, and librettists.
John Guare is an American playwright and screenwriter. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation.
Robert Patrick was an American playwright, poet, lyricist, short story writer, and novelist.
Lynn Nottage is an American playwright whose work often focuses on the experience of working-class people, particularly working-class people who are Black. She has received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: in 2009 for her play Ruined, and in 2017 for her play Sweat. She was the first woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama two times.
J. T. Rogers is an American playwright. He is best known for his play Oslo (2016) about the 1990s Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and Palestine. The play received widespread acclaim as well as the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Obie Award for Best Play. He is also known for his plays Madagascar (2004),The Overwhelming (2006), Blood and Gifts (2010), and Corruption (2024).
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is an American playwright, screenwriter, and comic book writer best known for his work for Marvel Comics and for the television series Glee (2011–2014), Big Love (2009–2011), Riverdale (2017–2023), Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018–2020) and Pretty Little Liars (2022–present). He is chief creative officer of Archie Comics.
Bill Bowers is an American mime artist and actor based in New York City. As an actor, mime and educator, Bill has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. He is a Movement for Actors Instructor at NYU Tisch School for the Arts and also teaches at the William Esper Studio and the Stella Adler Studio in NYC.
Stephen Adly Guirgis is an American playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. He is a member and a former co-artistic director of New York City's LAByrinth Theater Company. His plays have been produced both Off-Broadway and on Broadway, as well as in the UK. His play Between Riverside and Crazy won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
David Greenspan is an American actor and playwright. He is the recipient of six Obies, including an award in 2010 for Sustained Achievement.
Ken Urban is an American playwright, screenwriter, and musician based in New York. Urban is a resident playwright at New Dramatists and an affiliated writer at the Playwrights' Center.
Betty Shamieh is an American playwright, author, screenwriter, and actor of Palestinian descent. She has written 15 plays.
Annie Baker is an American playwright and teacher who won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her play The Flick. Among her works are the Shirley, Vermont plays, which take place in the fictional town of Shirley: Circle Mirror Transformation, Nocturama, Body Awareness, and The Aliens. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2017.
Willy Holtzman is an American playwright and screenwriter, often focusing on theatrical representations of actual historical events. Holtzman has received two Pulitzer Prize nominations, a Humanitas Prize, a Writers Guild Award, a Peabody Award, as well as an HBO Award at the National Playwrights Conference.
Young Jean Lee is an American playwright, director, and filmmaker. She was the Artistic Director of Young Jean Lee's Theater Company, a not-for-profit theater company dedicated to producing her work. She has written and directed ten shows for Young Jean Lee's Theater Company and toured her work to over thirty cities around the world. Lee was called "the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation" by Charles Isherwood in The New York Times and "one of the best experimental playwrights in America" by David Cote in Time Out New York. With the 2018 production of Straight White Men at the Hayes Theater, Lee became the first Asian American woman to have a play produced on Broadway.
Craig Pospisil is an American playwright, musical bookwriter and filmmaker. He has written nine full-length plays and musicals, mostly comedies, and more than 40 short plays and musicals.
Kimball Allen is an American writer, journalist, playwright, and actor. He is the author of two autobiographical one-man plays: Secrets of a Gay Mormon Felon (2012) and Be Happy Be Mormon (2014). The latter premiered at Theatre Row in Manhattan on September 24 and 27, 2014, as part of the United Solo Theatre Festival. From 2015 to 2017 he hosted the recurring Triple Threat w/ Kimball Allen, a 90-minute variety talk show at The Triple Door in Seattle.
Harrison David Rivers is an American playwright. Rivers' work has won him the Relentless Award, a GLAAD Media Award, a McKnight Fellowship for Playwrights, a Jerome Foundation Many Voices Fellowship, an Emerging Artist of Color Fellowship, a Van Lier Fellowship and the New York Stage & Film's Founders Award. He is based in Saint Paul, Minnesota and is married to Christopher Bineham.
Jeremy O. Harris is an American playwright, actor, and philanthropist. Harris gained prominence for his 2018 Slave Play, which received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Play. Harris is also known for his work in film and television. He produced and co-wrote the A24 film Zola (2021), for which he received a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay. He acted in the HBO Max series Gossip Girl (2021), the Netflix series Emily in Paris (2022), and in the film The Sweet East (2023).