William Missouri Downs

PLAYWRITING

I have had a few hundred productions of my plays, which sounds glamorous until you realize most of them involved folding chairs. Along the way I have been lucky enough to receive several awards, including rolling world premieres from the National New Play Network for Women Playing Hamlet and The Exit Interview, and I have twice been a finalist at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference for Mad Gravity and How to Steal a Picasso.

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My work has been produced by theaters such as Orlando Shakes, InterAct Theatre in Philadelphia, San Diego Rep, Berkeley Rep, the Kennedy Center, Salt Lake Acting Company, Actors Theatre of Charlotte, the Jewish Theatre of Toronto, Bloomington Playwrights Project, Detroit Rep, and the New York City Fringe Festival, among many others. Internationally, my plays have been produced in Spain, Canada, Slovenia, South Africa, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, the UAE, Austria, Israel, India, England, Australia, South Korea, and throughout the United States.

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Thirteen of my plays are published, including The Exit Interview, Kosher Lutherans, Cockeyed, Mad Gravity, Mr. Perfect, Women Playing Hamlet, Dead White Males, Headset, Seagulls in a Cherry Tree, How to Steal a Picasso, Asking Strangers the Meaning of Life, Innocent Thoughts, and my adaptation of A Doll's House. My monologues have appeared in nine collections.

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I have served as a respondent at several play festivals, including the William Inge and Last Frontier festivals, and was honored as a finalist for the Nick Darke Award at the Royal Court Theatre in London. I studied playwriting with Milan Stitt and Lanford Wilson at Circle Rep in New York. Patricia McLaughlin represents me at the Beacon Artists Agency, which makes me sound more organized than I actually am.

 

TEXTBOOKS

I have written four textbooks, including The Art of Theatre, now in its 5th edition and used by more than 100,000 college students.  My screenwriting book, Screenplay: Writing the Picture, is in its third edition and is required reading at a number of film schools, including in Poland, where it appears under the much more impressive title Scenariusz Filmowy. I also wrote Naked Playwriting and Playwriting: From Formula to Form, which together form a gentle warning about how strange this profession can be.

 

NOVELS

I have published two novels. Five Minutes from Chaos is a Kafka-flavored comedy about theater departments, philosophy professors, and the special madness of academia. Immaculate Deception is a contemporary satire about Christian nationalism, making it light reading for dark times.

 

SCREEN AND TELEVISION

I hold an MFA in screenwriting from UCLA. I began in television as a script secretary on Moonlighting, starring Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd, and slowly worked my way up to staff writer on the NBC sitcom My Two Dads. I also wrote episodes of Amen and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which remains my strongest argument for being invited to dinner parties. I won UCLA’s Jack Nicholson Award for screenwriting, sold a film to Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment, optioned another to Filmways, and optioned a television pilot to producer Meryl Poster.

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ACTING AND DIRECTING

I also hold an MFA in acting from the University of Illinois and appeared in about twenty plays before a slight stammer caused by viral encephalitis gently suggested I explore careers where talking less was encouraged. I studied directing with Oscar-nominated Polish director Jerzy Antczak and have since directed around forty professional, academic, and community productions.

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SEMI-INTERESTING STUFF

I stumbled up to the Dakota Building moments after John Lennon was assassinated, which remains both tragic and the worst possible timing. Peggy Lee once fired me for missing a spotlight cue. I was held at gunpoint after wandering into the archaeological dig at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. With almost no training, I piloted a glider 5,000 feet above the Palomar Observatory in California, a decision that made sense only at ground level. I have lived in a Manhattan flophouse, a Hollywood bungalow, a dormitory in China, a flat in London, a beach house on the Gulf of Mexico, and a log cabin in the mountains of Colorado, suggesting either curiosity or a deep fear of permanence. I am also a Super Lark, which means I wake up every morning between 3 and 4 a.m., alert, cheerful, and deeply unpopular.

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TRAVEL

I have climbed the Great Wall of China, ducked into the Pyramids of Giza, stood where the Colossus of Rhodes once towered, wandered through the Taj Mahal, walked the streets of Pompeii, hiked the ruins of Delos, and climbed to the top of the Duomo. I marched in the Candlelight Revolution in South Korea, peered into North Korea from the DMZ, touched the walls of Troy, paid respects at the grave of Ira Aldridge, attended Shinto festivals in Tokyo, and scowled back at the guards in Tiananmen Square. I have drunk Bacardi in Barbados, beer in Budapest, piña coladas in Portugal, Irish whiskey in Istanbul, and absinthe in Amsterdam. I helicoptered onto Columbia Glacier in Alaska, fly-fished in Wyoming, taught at the University of Shanghai, been robbed in Manhattan, studied with a sadhu on a mountaintop in India, taken a curtain call in Vienna, sunbathed in the Algarve and Belize, studied the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, mourned at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Hiroshima, protested fascism in Madrid, smiled at the Mona Lisa, and visited thirty-seven ancient Greek and Roman theaters from England to Turkey.

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If you have read all of this, you deserve a curtain call. I hope it offers a clear sense of who I am. Please take a look at my plays. Most are small-cast comedies, built for real theaters, and real budgets.