About Will Dunne

Will DunneWill Dunne has a combined stage and screen background which brings more than 20 years of practical experience to the consultations and workshops he conducts. He is not only a seasoned instructor, but also an active writer whose plays have generated many international, national, and local honors.

STAGE BACKGROUND
While continuing to offer weekend intensives in San Francisco, Will Dunne is a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists (September 2006 - September 2009) where he is now developing plays and teaching classes. Through his association with Chicago Dramatists, his short comedy Deep Gardens was presented at Chicago's Second City in the summer of 2006.

In the 35-year history of the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center, Will Dunne is one of only five playwrights to be selected three consecutive times for the U.S. National Playwrights Conference under the Artistic Direction of Lloyd Richards. How I Became an Interesting Person (1998), Love and Drowning (1997), and Hotel Desperado (1996) were each one of ten plays chosen annually from about 1,500 submissions nationwide for presentation at the O'Neill Center.

How I Became an Interesting Person received the 1998 Charles MacArthur Fellowship founded by Helen Hayes for outstanding comedy that "exemplifies the comic irreverent spirit of Charles MacArthur." The play also was presented as an international selection at the 1999 Australian National Playwrights Conference in Canberra, New South Wales, and in a Croatian translation at the National Theatre of Istria in Pula, Croatia, in 1999. Hotel Desperado was translated into Russian by the Moscow Theatre Union and presented as the international selection at its 10th annual festival of new plays in Schelykovo, Russia, in 1997.

In 2000, Will Dunne's play Moonrise was a finalist for the Heideman Award at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. U.S. productions of his work — such as Eleventh Hour, I Married a Werewolf, Between Quakes, and The Bridge — have received four Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards, two DramaLogue Playwriting Awards, and a Best-of-Year mention from the San Francisco Examiner. His toll-taker play The Bridge also was selected as a project of the 50-Year Celebration of the Golden Gate Bridge. He has been featured in such publications as the New York Times, BackStage, and San Francisco Chronicle, and has served as a juror for Marin Arts Council playwriting grants in the Bay Area.

His playwriting background is supplemented by years of acting, directing, and producing. He received a Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Solo Performance in Eleventh Hour which he also wrote. His acting instructors include Stella Adler and Jean Shelton. Will Dunne was a co-founder of San Francisco Actors Theatre and also of the Bay Area Playwrights Association. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Theatre Communications Group, and Theatre Bay Area.

SCREEN BACKGROUND
In addition to theatrical feature-length screenwriting, Will Dunne has written, directed, and/or produced more than 100 short semi-theatrical educational scripts for such companies as Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Films, Walt Disney Educational Media, and Viacom Enterprises in association with Twentieth Century Fox.

These programs have generated nearly 40 media awards in such competitions as the International Film and Television Festival of New York, Chicago International Film Festival, and U.S. Industrial Film Festival. Captain Mathuse's Math Mission, a prototype interactive videodisc which he directed, received a Silver Medal from the New York Film Festival and was selected for screening at the Cannes Video Festival. Zoo Film — an animated film which he wrote, directed, and co-produced — was adapted as a television commercial for zoos across the U.S., from the Bronx Zoo to the Los Angeles Zoo.

TEACHING BACKGROUND
Since 1988, Will Dunne has taught nearly 1,500 dramatic writing workshops. In 1999, he attended the U.S. National Playwrights Conference as a dramaturg and, in 1999 and 2000, the Australian National Playwrights Conference as a guest playwriting instructor. He also has taught playwriting workshops through Theatre Bay Area, film animation workshops through San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and writing classes at University of Illinois at Chicago Circle.

PLAYS BY WILL DUNNE
Email us or call (415) 609-8670 to obtain copies of any of the following Will Dunne full-length works or short plays.

Full Length Works

  • How I Became an Interesting Person. Comedy. An odd, boring man moves into a boarding house in search of a new life and finds more than he bargained for when his eccentric landlady begins to find him interesting. (3M, 3F. One set representing multiple locations. 100 minutes.)
     
  • Love and Drowning. Drama. A woman is resuscitated from clinical death after drowning and must untangle the mysteries of her near death experience as she straddles the gap between love in this life and peace in the next. (3M, 3F. One set representing multiple locations. 105 minutes.)
     
  • Hotel Desperado. Drama. A drifter finds himself trapped in a very strange and seedy hotel which begins changing into a remote dunes house from far away and long ago as the ghosts of a violent past return to haunt him. (3M, 2F. One flexible set. 115 minutes.)
     
  • Rag Doll in a Mad Dog's Mouth. Drama. The matriarch of a family of unsuccessful men must confront her worst fear when a mysterious woman arrives unexpectedly for the last Christmas of the Twentieth Century and miracle is in the air. ( 2F, 5M. One set. 110 minutes.)
     
  • Hustle. Thriller. An elaborate con game begins when a street hustler brings a john back to his room where everything is for sale if the buyer is willing to pay the hidden costs. (4M, 1F. One set. 85 minutes.)
     
  • Mr. Smith Goes to Hell. Comedy. A middle-aged man who has lived a life of virtue and self-sacrifice wakes up in Hades with a wild young woman who claims to have died with him during a night of debauchery which he can't remember. (3M, 2F playing multiple roles. One set. 115 minutes.)
     
  • I Married a Werewolf. Bedroom farce. A chain of secrets is unleashed when the full moon rises on the honeymoon suite of a Niagara Falls motel where neither the bride nor groom nor their lecherous hosts are quite whom they seemed to be. (2M, 2F. One set. 80 minutes.)
     
  • Eleventh Hour. Multi-media solo performance. A man who has decided to shoot himself sees his life rushing by in bits and pieces as the clock ticks away his final hour. (1M. One set. 60 minutes.)
     
  • Three Blind Mice. Drama. Two small-time crooks who have kidnapped a wealthy young woman must figure out what to do when her family refuses to pay the ransom. (2F, 1M. One set. 80 minutes.)
     
  • The Silent Pharaoh. Weird romance (screenplay). A quirky temp secretary learns that her boss has stolen the ancient mummy of a famous Egyptian ruler and is planning to restore it to life on national television. (Multiple roles and locations)

Short Plays
Will Dunne short plays are available in three collections or individually.

  • Rise. Six serio-comic works about isolation and those who must rise to occasions they didn't expect. Plays: Moonrise, Portrait of Madame de Bouvier, The Interpreter, Deep Gardens, The Princess and the Pirate, and Sunrise. (2F, 3M playing multiple roles. Six simple settings. 75 minutes.)
     
  • Odd Jobs. Six dark comedies about people with unusual occupations and dilemmas. Plays: Tea Time, Art of Ventriloquism, Back to Front, Hollywood Massage, Psychic Reading $10, and The Bridge. (3M, 2F playing multiple roles. Six simple settings. 100 minutes.)
     
  • Between Quakes. Three dark comedies about people whose lives have been jolted out of control. Plays: Back to Front, The Bridge, Krapp's Latest, But Not Last, Tape. (3M, 1F playing multiple roles. Three simple settings. 65 minutes.)