John Pielmeier

Last updated

John Pielmeier (born February 23, 1949) is an American playwright, screenwriter and novelist.

Contents

Life and career

Pielmeier was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, the son of Louise (Blackburn) and Len Pielmeier. [1] He was raised Catholic. [2] He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Catholic University of America in 1970 and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1978. [3] He began his career as an actor, working with such repertory companies as Actors Theater of Louisville and the Guthrie Theater.

In 1976, Pielmeier's first play, A Chosen Room, was produced in Minneapolis. Three years later, Agnes of God was performed in a staged reading at the O'Neill National Playwrights' Conference in Waterford, Connecticut and won the 1979 Great American Play Contest. A full production was mounted for the Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in 1980, and the Broadway production opened in March 1982 at the Music Box Theatre, where it ran for 599 performances. [4] His screenplay for the 1985 screen adaptation earned him a nomination for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

Pielmeier has written extensively for the stage, but his later work never achieved the success he experienced with Agnes of God. On Broadway, The Boys of Winter (1985) [5] and Sleight of Hand (1987) [6] both ran for 31 previews and 9 performances, and Voices in the Dark (1999) [7] ran for 12 previews and 64 performances. For the latter work, Pielmeier won the Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Mystery Play. Other plays include Courage, a one-man show about J. M. Barrie that was filmed by Kentucky Educational Television; Young Rube, a musical based on the early years of cartoonist/inventor Rube Goldberg; Willi, a one-man show based on the speeches of mountaineer Willi Unsoeld, a member of the first American expedition to reach the summit of Mount Everest; and The Exorcist, a play based on the novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty.

In 1983, Pielmeier penned the television movie Choices of the Heart , about murdered American missionaries in El Salvador, for which he received the Christopher Award, the Humanitas Award, a Writers Guild of America nomination, and an honorary Doctorate of Letters from St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas. Additional television credits include The Shell Seekers (1989), The Stranger Within (1990), An Inconvenient Woman (1991), Through the Eyes of a Killer (1992), The Last P.O.W.? The Bobby Garwood Story (1992), Flowers for Algernon (2000), Sins of the Father (2002), Hitler: The Rise of Evil (2003), Sybil (2007), The Capture of the Green River Killer (2008), The Memory Keeper's Daughter (2008), The Pillars of the Earth (2010), and World Without End (2012).

Pielmeier has been married to poet/author Irene O'Garden since October 1982. The couple lives in Garrison, New York.

Publication

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Cotten</span> American actor (1905–1994)

Joseph Cheshire Cotten Jr. was an American film, stage, radio and television actor. Cotten achieved prominence on Broadway, starring in the original stage productions of The Philadelphia Story and Sabrina Fair. He then gained worldwide fame in three Orson Welles films: Citizen Kane (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and Journey into Fear (1943), for which Cotten was also credited with the screenplay.

<i>The Rose Tattoo</i>

The Rose Tattoo is a three-act play written by Tennessee Williams in 1949 and 1950; after its Chicago premiere on December 29, 1950, he made further revisions to the play for its Broadway premiere on February 2, 1951, and its publication by New Directions the following month. A film adaptation was released in 1955. The Rose Tattoo tells the story of an Italian-American widow in Mississippi who has withdrawn from the world after her husband's death and expects her daughter to do the same.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Abbott</span> American writer and director

George Francis Abbott was an American theatre producer, director, playwright, screenwriter, film director and producer whose career spanned eight decades.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anne Bancroft</span> American actress (1931–2005)

Anne Bancroft was an American actress. Bancroft received an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Cannes Film Festival Award. She is one of only 24 thespians to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting.

Agnes of God is a 1979 play by American playwright John Pielmeier which tells the story of a novice nun who gives birth and insists that the child was the result of a virgin conception. A psychiatrist and the mother superior of the convent clash during the resulting investigation. The title is a pun on the Latin phrase Agnus Dei.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martin McDonagh</span> British-Irish filmmaker and playwright

Martin Faranan McDonagh is a British-Irish playwright and filmmaker. He is known for his absurdist black humour which often challenges the modern theatre aesthetic. He has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, six BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, three Olivier Awards, and nominations for five Tony Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marsha Norman</span> American writer

Marsha Norman is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. She received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play 'night, Mother. She wrote the book and lyrics for such Broadway musicals as The Secret Garden, for which she won a Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, and The Red Shoes, as well as the libretto for the musical The Color Purple and the book for the musical The Bridges of Madison County. She is co-chair of the playwriting department at The Juilliard School.

Albert Horton Foote Jr. was an American playwright and screenwriter. He received Academy Awards for his screenplays for the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, which was adapted from the 1960 novel of the same name by Harper Lee, and his original screenplay for the film Tender Mercies (1983). He was also known for his notable live television dramas produced during the Golden Age of Television.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Craig Lucas</span> American playwright, screenwriter, theatre director, musical actor, and film director

Craig Lucas is an American playwright, screenwriter, theatre director, musical actor, and film director.

David Lindsay-Abaire is an American playwright, lyricist and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2007 for his play Rabbit Hole, which also earned several Tony Award nominations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jason Miller (playwright)</span> American actor and playwright (1939–2001)

Jason Miller was an American playwright and actor. He won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play for his play That Championship Season, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Father Damien Karras in the 1973 horror film The Exorcist, a role he reprised in The Exorcist III. He later became artistic director of the Scranton Public Theatre in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where That Championship Season was set.

<i>Butley</i> (play) 1971 play by English playwright Simon Gray

Butley is a play by Simon Gray set in the office of an English lecturer at a university in London, England. The title character, a T. S. Eliot scholar, is an alcoholic who loses his wife and his close friend and colleague – and possibly male lover – on the same day. The action of the dark comedy takes place over several hours on the same day during which he bullies students, friends and colleagues while falling apart at the seams. The play won the 1971 Evening Standard Award for Best Play.

Matty Selman is a playwright, lyricist, composer, and author based in New York City. He first came into the national spotlight when he was hand-selected by Harvard's Robert Brustein to write the lyrics to an adaptation of Lysistrata with music by HAIR composer, Galt MacDermot. The resulting work starred Tony Award winner Cherry Jones and was presented by the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard and the Prince Theatre in Philadelphia.

Robert Woodruff Anderson was an American playwright, screenwriter, and theatrical producer. He received two Academy Award nominations for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, for the drama films The Nun's Story (1959) and I Never Sang for My Father (1970), the latter based on his play.

<i>Wise Child</i> Play by Simon Gray

Wise Child is a 1967 play by English playwright Simon Gray.

David Scott Milton was an American author, playwright, screenwriter, and actor. His plays are known for their theatricality, wild humor, and poetic realism, while his novels and films are darker and more naturalistic. As a novelist, he has been compared to Graham Greene, John Steinbeck, and Nelson Algren. Ben Gazzara’s performance in Milton’s play, Duet, received a Tony nomination. Another play, Skin, won the Neil Simon Playwrights Award. His theater piece, Murderers Are My Life, was nominated as best one-man show by the Valley Theater League of Los Angeles. His second novel, Paradise Road, was given the Mark Twain Journal award "for significant contribution to American literature."

Deanna Dunagan is an American actress. While principally active as a stage actress, she has also worked in television and film. She is best known for her Tony Award-winning portrayal of Violet Weston in Tracy Letts' August: Osage County and for her portrayal of Nana in M. Night Shyamalan's 2015 film The Visit. She has also appeared in the recurring roles of Mother Bernadette on the Fox television series The Exorcist and Mrs. Charles on Chicago Med. She portrayed Dr. Willa Sipe in the 2018 film An Acceptable Loss by writer Joe Chappelle; and starred as Sharon in the 2021 film Stillwater alongside Matt Damon and Abigail Breslin.

Sharr White is an American playwright and screenwriter. He's known for his Broadway plays The Other Place (2011), The Snow Geese (2013), and Pictures From Home (2023). He's also known as a producer and writer for Showtime series The Affair (2015-2019), the Starz series Sweetbitter (2019), the HBO Max series Generation (2021), and the Netflix limited series Halston (2021).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucas Hnath</span> American playwright

Lucas Hnath is an American playwright. He won the 2016 Obie Award for excellence in playwriting for his plays Red Speedo and The Christians. He also won a Whiting Award.

<i>The Exorcist</i> (play)

The Exorcist is a play by John Pielmeier based on the novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty and is part of The Exorcist franchise. The story revolves around a young girl, Regan MacNeil, who is possessed by a demonic spirit. Her mother, Chris, seeks out to the church to perform an exorcism.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.