Theater Arts Faculty Directory

Concentration: 

Playwriting

Lee Blessing

Head of Playwriting Program

Lee Blessing has become a major voice in the modern American theater. His plays have been nominated for Tony and Olivier awards and a Pulitzer Prize. Recent plays in New York, Thief River, Cobb and Chesapeake, received Drama Desk nominations and an award, plus nominations from the Outer Critics Circle. He's had two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as from the Guggenheim, Bush, McKnight and Jerome Foundations. His plays include A Walk In The Woods, Eleemosynary, Two Rooms, Down The Road and Going To St. Ives among many others, and have been performed throughout the world. His work has been stage-read in eight different summers at the O'Neill Playwrights Conference in Waterford, Ct.


Richard Dresser

Playwriting

Richard Dresser’s plays are widely produced in New York, regional theater, and Europe. His trilogy of plays about happiness in America includes Augusta (working class), The Pursuit Of Happiness (middle class), and A View Of The Harbor (upper class). Other plays are: Rounding Third, Below The Belt, Something In The Air, Gun-Shy, The Downside, Alone At The Beach, Wonderful World, and Better Days. He wrote the Broadway musical Good Vibrations and the Sundance film Human Error, plus many short plays. His most recent projects include a musical, Red Sox Nation, a play for high school students, Club Mojito, and a new play about the notorious gangster Whitey Bulger. He also writes for film and television.


James Ryan

Screenwriting

James Ryan has written over fifteen plays and a dozen screenplays. His work has been produced at Playwrights Horizons, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Circle Repertory Theatre, Act One in Los Angeles, The O'Neill Theatre Center, and Berkeley Stage Company, among other venues. He is the recipient of fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and The New York Foundation for the Arts; he has received a Drama League Award and a McKnight Fellowship. He has received residencies at Yaddo and The Millay Colony and commissions from South Coast Repertory Company and Actors Theatre of Louisville. Ryan has written screenplays for Disney and Warner Bros.' Spring Creek Productions, and recently completed an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel Found in the Street for Granada Films and Mr. Mudd. He wrote and directed The Young Girl and the Monsoon, a feature film which had its world premiere at The Los Angeles Independent Film Festival; released by Artistic License Films in North America, it was also released on cable by Showtime, and on DVD by Vanguard International Video. The film won the Gold Medal, Jury Prize, and Best Screenplay Award at the Wine Country Film Festival, and the Best Actress Award at The American Film Institute's Los Angeles International Film Festival, and has been shown in Israel, France, and Cuba. For TV, he has written for Showtime, Lifetime and ABC daytime television. He began his career as an actor, studying with Uta Hagen, and appeared in the films Five Corners, Falling in Love, and Joe vs. The Volcano. His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service, Samuel French, and Smith and Kraus. His book, Screenwriting from the Heart: The Technique of the Character- Centered Screenplay, is published by Billboard Books. He served as Chair of the Playwriting Department, Actors Studio Drama School, New School University, where he taught for nine years.


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