Over the past twenty years, RICHARD DRESSER’S plays have been widely produced on and off Broadway, in the nation’s leading regional theaters, and extensively throughout Europe.
BELOW THE BELT, about three American men attempting to work together in a foreign land started at the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival, ran off-Broadway at the John Houseman Theatre, appeared throughout the country, and was a longrunning hit in Berlin, triggering many European productions. It was subsequently made into a film HUMAN ERROR, directed by Robert M. Young, which appeared at the Sundance Film Festival.
ROUNDING THIRD, which deals with competition in American society through the prism of Little League baseball, premiered at the Northlight Theater in Chicago, ran off-Broadway and has since had hundreds of productions throughout the country. It was recently made into a movie starring John C. McGinley and Garret Dillahun which will be released in 2016.
His trilogy of plays about happiness in America, with each play set in a different social class, includes: AUGUSTA (working class), THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS (middle class) and A VIEW OF THE HARBOR (upper class).
Other plays include:
- SOMETHING IN THE AIR, a contemporary film noir about the very last sure-fire investment left on earth, which started at CATF in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
- GUN-SHY, which started at Louisville’s Humana Festival and ran at Playwrights Horizons in New York, about the tumultuous end and subsequent beginning of a marriage.
- THE DOWNSIDE, which started at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven about a desperate pharmaceutical company betting everything on a new anti-stress drug.
- ALONE AT THE BEACH, which started at Actors Theatre of Louisville, about prickly single people attempting to share a summer house without resorting to homicide.
- WONDERFUL WORLD, which also started in Louisville, about a family torn apart by demonic in-laws.
- THE LAST DAYS OF MICKEY & JEAN about a notorious Boston gangster on the run with his much younger girlfriend, which premiered at the Merrimack Repertory Theater in Lowell, Massachusetts.
- He wrote the Beach Boys musical GOOD VIBRATIONS which started at New York Stage & Film and later ran on Broadway.
- He also wrote the book for the musical JOHNNY BASEBALL (lyrics by Willie Reale, music by Robert Reale) which premiered at A.R.T in Cambridge and moved on to the Williamstown Theatre Festival in July 2013.
- His latest collaboration with the Reale brothers is THE HOLLER, a bluegrass ghost musical set in Kentucky which first appeared in a workshop at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
He has written many short plays, including WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF? which is staged in a car with three audience members in the back seat. It started at the Humana Festival and ran in Hamburg Germany for four years. The back seat was frequently sold out. A new play, TROUBLE COMETH, about two executives locked in an existential struggle against an impossible deadline premiered in 2015 at the San Francisco Playhouse. Another new play, CLOSURE, premiered in the summer of 2015 at the New Jersey Repertory Theatre in Long Branch, starring Gary Cole and Wendie Malick. He recently completed PUBLIC SPEAKING: Three short films starring Treat Williams.
He has worked in television for many years on a number of series including HBO’s “Vietnam War Stories” for which he won a cable ACE award, “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd” starring Blair Brown, “The Job” starring Denis Leary, “The Education of Max Bickford” starring Richard Dreyfuss, “Madigan Men” starring Gabiel Byrne, and such cult favorites as “Bakersfield P.D.,” and “Keen Eddie.” He created the web series “Life Coach” starring Cheri Oteri for AMC.
He is a graduate of Brown University and the University of North Carolina, a former member of New Dramatists and twice attended the O’Neill Playwrights Conference. He teaches at Rutgers University and is on the board of the Writers Guild Initiative, which is dedicated to facilitating story telling among underserved populations, including writing workshops with veterans and caregivers in conjunction with Wounded Warriors.