Michael Weller

Chris Albers
Andrew Bergman
Eric Bogosian
Marshall Brickman
Nora Ephron
Tom Fontana
Richard LaGravenese
Warren Leight
Kenneth Lonergan
Jenny Lumet
Marsha Norman
Eric Overmeyer
Ruben Santiago-Hudson
David Simon
Susanna Styron
Jim Yoshimura

Michael Winship
Lowell Peterson
Ex-officio

Marsha Manns
Executive Director

Playwright/screenwriter. Weller studied music composition at Brandeis University under Irving Fine, Harold Shapiro and Martin Boykin and earned his living as a jazz pianist before taking his graduate degree in theater at the University of Manchester, England.

His plays have been performed at major theatres in America and around the world. Best known are Moonchildren, Fishing, Loose Ends, Spoils of War and What The Night Is For, which premiered in the West End starring Gillian Anderson and Roger Allam. His films include Hair and Ragtime (for Milos Forman) and Lost Angels (for Hugh Hudson) and a teleplay of his Broadway drama “Spoils of War,” starring Kate Nelligan.

He designed and served for ten years as Supervising Mentor of the Mentor Project of the Cherry Lane Theatre, which recently celebrated its eleventh season. With the generous guidance of Edward Albee, the Project brings gifted new writers together with established playwright-mentors to develop and produce three new works each year, then helps guide them towards a professional career. Over thirty three new plays have been produced to date, many of which have gone on to successful commercial productions; most notably 16 Wounded, by Elaim Kriam, which opened on Broadway in 2004, and Jailbait, which in April of 2009 concluded a successful run at The Cherry Pit Theatre.

His play 50 Words (starring Elizabeth Marvel and Norbert Leo Butz) enjoyed a highly acclaimed run at the Lucielle Lortel Theatre, directed by Austin Pendleton, who will direct his new play Side Effects in the coming season, again at the Lucielle Lortel. His play Beast enjoyed a controversial run at the New York Theatre Workshop last fall, and is soon to be published, as will his trilogy of interlocking two character plays, Loving, Longing, Leaving.

Dr Zhivago, from the novel by Boris Pasternak, for which he wrote the book (Des McAnuff to direct, Lucy Simon music, Amy Powers and Michael Korie lyrics) will open he Lyric Theatre in Sydney Australia in March, 2011, Starring Anthony Warlow. He recently completed the book for a Broadway musical Rumors about the making of Fleetwood Mac’s two legendary breakthrough albums, to be directed by Taylor Hackford.

He is currently completing a screenplay for Carol Polakoff Productions about the recent Safe Haven law in Nebraska, which allowed parents to give difficult children to the state to raise, up to the age of 18. He is also developing a television series for Meredith Vieira, based loosely on Moonchildren, his classic play of college life during the Vietnam War.

His work has won an Academy Award nomination, an N.A.A.C.P. Outstanding Contribution Award, Critics Outer Circle Award, a Rockefeller Foundation Grant and a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award, and he was honored by The Broken Watch Theatre Company, which named it’s playhouse in his honor. He is on the counsel of the Writer’s Guild Fund, and the Dramatists Guild of America.