 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
William Missouri Downs is an American comedy writer, playwright, screenwriter, stage director, and author.
William Missouri Downs started as an actor earning an MFA in acting from the University of Illinois, but a bout with viral encephalitis left him with a slight stammer and ended his acting career. [1] So he moved to New York [2] and studied playwriting at the Circle Rep Theatre [ citation needed ] under Lanford Wilson and Milan Stitt.
He then moved to Los Angeles [3] and earned an MFA in screenwriting from UCLA. [4] While a student at UCLA film school, he won numerous screenwriting awards, including the Jack Nicholson prize. [5]
In Hollywood, he worked as a script secretary on NBC's Moonlighting and studied sitcom writing at the Warner Brothers Sitcom Writing Workshop. He was a staff writer on NBC's My Two Dads , with writing credits on four episodes, under the pen name Bill Streib.[ citation needed ] As Streib, he also credited with writing one episode each for the NBC shows Amen and Fresh Prince Of Bel Air . In addition, he sold a movie to Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment and optioned another to Filmways. He worked with Jim Parsons developing a TV pilot that was optioned by Hollywood producer Meryl Poster.[ citation needed ]
His plays includeThe Exit Interview [6] (which premiered at the Orlando Shakespeare), winner of a rolling premiere[ clarification needed ] from the National New Play Network, published by Samuel French; [7] Women Playing Hamlet [8] (which premiered at the Unicorn Theatre in Missouri), winner of a rolling premiere from NNPN, published by Playscripts; [9] Mad Gravity, a finalist at the Eugene O'Neill[ clarification needed ] and winner of the Reva Shiner Comedy Award, [10] premiering at the Bloomington Playwrights Project, published by Playscripts; [11] Cockeyed [7] winner of The Greenhouse Festival of New Plays, published by Samuel French; Seagulls in a Cherry Tree, [12] winner of the Larry Corse Prize for Playwriting, published by Heuer Publishing; Mr. Perfect [13] published by Playscripts; Headset, A View from the Light Booth [12] published by Heuer Publishing; Kosher Lutherans [14] published by Samuel French; Dead White Males [15] published by Playscripts; How to Steal a Picasso, a finalist at the Eugene O'Neill; [16] Innocent Thoughts, published by Next Stage Press; [17] A Doll House (adaptation) published by Next Stage Press; Kabuki Medea, [18] winner of the Bay Area Critics Award for Best Production in San Francisco; Kabuki Faust; [19] and Forgiving John Lennon; [20] and Fascism! The Musical. [21]
There have been over 250 productions of his plays, including productions at the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, [22] the InterAct Theatre in Philadelphia, [23] the San Diego Rep, [24] the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Salt Lake City Acting Company, the Actors Theatre of Charlotte, [25] the Jewish Theatre of Toronto, [26] the Bloomington Playwright's Project, the Detroit Rep, and the New York City Fringe Festival. [27]
His plays have been produced in Spain (Fuera de órbita), [28] Canada, South Africa (Durban Performing Arts Center), Russia (Хороший парень - The Serov Theatre Drama After Chekhov, [29] Serov), Singapore (The Hexis Theatre), Switzerland (Franklin University, Lugano,), Austria (stadt Theater walfischgasse, Vienna), Israel (The International Theatre Festival), India (Alliance Francaise de Bangalore, Bangalore),[ citation needed ] and South Korea (피카소를 훔치는 법 & 실제 게임 at Theatre in Daehangno & Daehakro Theatre, Seoul).
Downs has an extensive publication record including articles, plays, and books. [30] He has co-authored four books, including Naked Playwriting [31] (Silman/James), Playwriting: From Formula to Form [32] (Harcourt Brace), Screenplay: Writing the Picture [33] (Silman/James), and The Art of Theatre [34] (Wadsworth/Cengage). The Art of Theatre has gone through multiple editions and has been adopted as a college textbook in the US.
Downs has won two rolling premieres from the National New Play Network [35] and twice been a finalist at the Eugene O'Neill. [36] [37] He also won the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild Julie Harris Award. [38]
Eric Coble is an American playwright and screenwriter. He is a member of the Playwrights' Unit of the Cleveland Play House.
Will Power is an American playwright, rapper, actor, and educator.
Rich Orloff is a playwright living in New York City.
Hal Corley is an American television writer and playwright. He was Associate Head Writer for All My Children and As The World Turns, for which he won five Daytime Emmy Awards and two Writers Guild of America Awards. His plays have been developed with the Seattle Repertory Theatre, Syracuse Stage, Walnut Street Theatre, Premiere Stages, Atlanta's Alliance Theatre, New York's Westbeth, San Francisco's New Conservatory Theatre Center, Adirondack Theatre Festival, Washington DC's Source, Stageworks/Hudson, Los Angeles' New American Theatre, and Ontario's Flush Ink. Three full-length scripts, Easter Monday, Mama and Jack Carew, and ODD, are published by Samuel French/Concord Theatricals. His Fanny Otcott, an adaptation of a sketch by Thornton Wilder, is published by YouthPLAYS; his Treed is in Playscripts' Great Short Plays Volume 10; and his Dolor is included in Applause's Best American Short Plays for 2014-2015. His work is excerpted in Smith & Krause's Best Stage Scenes of 2008 and Best Men's/Women's Stage Scenes and Monologues of 2011, 222 More Comedy Monologues (2017), and in Samuel French's Exceptional Monologues 2. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Writers Guild of America, East.
Hilly Hicks Jr. is an American playwright and screenwriter.
Robert Neil Sandberg, known professionally as R. N. Sandberg, is an American playwright and was a lecturer in the Princeton University Lewis Center for the Arts and Department of English. from 1995-2022
Aurand Harris (1915–1996) is the most produced playwright for young audiences in the United States. Over six decades he wrote more than 50 plays, many of which became classics in the children's play repertory. His play, "Androcles and the Lion", is said to be the single most-produced play in the field, surpassing even "Peter Pan" and "The Wind in the Willows." First staged Off-Broadway in 1963, the play remains Anchorage Press' top seller and it was estimated at the time of his death in 1996 to have been performed on over 30,000 occasions. The plays of Aurand Harris have been produced and applauded in thousands of productions around the world for nearly a half-century. Harris was a prodigious dramatist, writing a newly published play each season. He was a tireless experimenter of forms, themes, and subjects. This modest man of irrepressible imagination and energy carried a vast array of honors and accolades. He was the first recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Children's Theatre. He received an honorary doctorate from Indiana University and was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre. He was the first playwright to receive the Medallion of the Children's Theatre Foundation of America. Aurand Harris died on May 6, 1996, in Manhattan, New York. He is buried in the family plot in Jamesport, Missouri.
Bathsheba "Bash" Doran is a British-born playwright and TV scriptwriter living in New York City.
Elizabeth Wong is a contemporary American playwright, television writer, librettist, theatrical director, college professor, social essayist, and a writer of plays for young audiences. Her critically acclaimed plays include China Doll is a fictional tale of the actress, Anna May Wong; and Letters to A Student Revolutionary, a story of two friends during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Wong has written for television on All American Girl, starring Margaret Cho. She is a visiting lecturer at the College of Creative Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, where her papers are archived, an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, USC School of Theater, and an associate professor at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Dramatic Writing Program (1991) and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Broadcast Journalism from the University of Southern California (1980). She studied playwriting with Tina Howe, Maria Irene Fornes and Mac Wellman.
Judy GeBauer is an American playwright. Born in Long Beach, CA, she grew up in the Bay Area and spent several years abroad. Her love for acting and writing began early. By third grade, she had written several neighborhood plays and she was appearing in children's theatre productions, playing the Queen of Hearts, a spider, a clown, and a toy soldier. She moved with her family to Denmark during her junior high years and attended an international school and a private girls school in Copenhagen. With her mother and brother she traveled through Europe, the Middle East and Asia before returning to California.
Lauren Gunderson is an American playwright, screenwriter, and short story author, born in Atlanta. She lives in San Francisco, where she teaches playwriting. Gunderson was recognized by American Theatre magazine as America's most produced living playwright at Theatre Communications Group member theaters in 2017, and again in 2019–20.
Jon Jory is a theatrical director instrumental in the development of Actors Theatre of Louisville; he is also widely rumored to be the writer behind the pseudonym Jane Martin.
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.
Robin Russin is an American screenwriter, director, playwright, author and educator.
Liz Duffy Adams is an American playwright who has written many plays including Born With Teeth; Or,; Dog Act; The Salonnieres; A Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World; The Broken Machine, and others.
Jen Silverman is an American playwright, TV writer, and novelist.
Laura Jacqmin is a Los Angeles–based television writer, playwright, and video game writer from Shaker Heights, Ohio. She was the winner of the 2008 Wasserstein Prize, a $25,000 award given to recognize an emerging female playwright.
Michael (Mike) Lew is a Chinese-American playwright most renown for his works Teenage Dick, and Tiger Style!. He acquired his B.A. at Yale University in 2003, double majoring in Theatre (directing) and English (writing), then proceeded to get his artist diploma in playwriting at the Juilliard school in 2003. He is the co-director of Ma-Yi Writers Lab, the largest theatre company in the United States that aims to help Asian American writers produce and develop plays, and is on a 3-year fellowship at Ma-Yi through the Mellon Foundation.
Janine Nabers is an American playwright and television writer.
Jacqueline Goldfinger (she/they) is an American playwright, librettist, and dramaturg who is known for her plays Bottle Fly and Backwards Forward Back. She grew up in rural North Florida with a love of music and storytelling. Today, she is a playwright-librettist who seeks out unique collaborations, working across disciplines to create singular works of theater and opera. She works nationally and internationally on performative texts which speak to our shared humanity while honoring the nuanced identities of each character and culture.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |