Craig Wright (playwright)

Craig Wright (born April 25, 1965, in San Juan, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto Rican playwright, television producer and writer. He is known for writing for shows including Six Feet Under and Lost and creating the television series Dirty Sexy Money and Greenleaf. He also was the screenwriter for the movie Mr. Peabody & Sherman, released March 7, 2014.

For other people with the same name, see Craig Wright (disambiguation).

Craig Wright
Born (1965-04-25) April 25, 1965
San Juan, Puerto Rico
OccupationPlaywright, television writer, television producer, screenwriter
Years active2003–present

Biography

Born in 1965 in Puerto Rico, Wright attended St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, and went on to earn a Masters of Divinity degree from the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities.[1] He lives in Los Angeles and New York City.

Playwright

Wright is known primarily for his plays: Grace, Mistakes Were Made, The Pavilion, Recent Tragic Events, Main Street and numerous others. Wright has received awards and award nominations for his work, including the Jerome Fellowship at age 21 and apprenticeships in playwriting from the McKnight Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Wright was the recipient of the 2009 Horton Foote Excellence in American Playwriting Award from Baylor University in Waco, Texas.[2] He is a member of the ensemble of the Chicago-based A Red Orchid Theatre.

Pine City plays

Wright set four plays in Pine City, Minnesota.

Molly's Delicious, a romantic comedy, first played at the Arden Theatre Company, Philadelphia, in September 1997, directed by Aaron Posner. The play takes place in Pine City, Minnesota, in 1965.[3]

The next play set in Pine City is Orange Flower Water, described by the Chicago Sun-Times as "a brutally honest drama about marriage and infidelity."[4] The play premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago, from October through December 2003.[5] and ran Off-Broadway at the Edge Theater Company in April 2005.[6] It was published in August 2004.[7] In 2005 it was performed at the Off-Off-Broadway Theater for the New City with a cast of Arija Bareikis, Paul Sparks, Jason Butler Harner and Pamela J. Gray, directed by Carolyn Cantor,[8] and a 2013 production in Los Angeles was critically reviewed by Backstage.[9]

The Pavilion premiered Off-Broadway at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in September 2005.[10] The Pavilion was nominated for the American Theatre Critics Association Best New Play Award and a 2005–2006 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play and has had over 40 productions since its premiere in 2000; in the 2008 summer season it was produced at the Westport Country Playhouse.[11] It was also produced for Boise Contemporary Theater's 2009/10 Season.[12]

Melissa Arctic is the last play of his Pine City works, and ran at the Folger Theatre, Washington, DC, in January and February 2004, with direction by Aaron Posner.[13]

Other plays

Recent Tragic Events premiered at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington, D.C. in September 2002.[14] The play was then produced Off-Broadway by Playwrights Horizons in September 2003.[15] The play won an ATCA Best New Play Citation Award in 2002.

Grace premiered in October 2004 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.[16] The play premiered on Broadway at the Cort Theatre in September 2012 (previews), officially on October 4, 2012, and features Kate Arrington, Ed Asner, Paul Rudd and Michael Shannon with direction by Dexter Bullard.[17]

His play The Unseen was performed at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York in March 2009. Blind premiered in February 2010 at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre in New York.[18] The Gray Sisters premiered in April 2010 at Third Rail Rep in Portland, Oregon.

Television career

His television writing debut was on the 2001 HBO series, Six Feet Under, joining the writing staff during the 2003 season. During that season, he wrote "Twilight," for which he was nominated for an Emmy and "Timing and Space"; he penned 3 more episodes of Six Feet Under and co-wrote one with co-executive producer, Jill Soloway. In 2004, he was appointed Executive Story Editor with Nancy Oliver. In 2005, he became a producer for the fifth and final season.

In 2005, he signed a 2-year deal with Touchstone Television. He served as a supervising producer and writer for the second season of ABCs Lost in Fall 2005. He left the series midseason after co-writing two episodes. Wright and the Lost writing staff won the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2006 ceremony for their work on the first and second seasons.[19]

Wright became a co-executive producer and writer on ABC's Brothers & Sisters in 2006.

During the 2007 season, Wright worked as the creator, head writer, and executive producer of ABC's Dirty Sexy Money, which stars Six Feet Under alumnus Peter Krause, Donald Sutherland, Samaire Armstrong and William Baldwin. The pilot was produced by Greg Berlanti and directed by Peter Horton. The series premiered in the fall of 2007.

In 2015, Wright created drama series Greenleaf for Oprah Winfrey Network.[20]

Six Feet Under episodes
  • Timing and Space, (2003)
  • Twilight, (2003)
  • Falling into Place, (2004)
  • The Black Forest, with Jill Soloway, (2004)
  • Time Flies, (2005)
  • Static (2005)

Lost episodes

Brothers & Sisters episodes
  • "Affairs of State", with Jon Robin Baitz (2006)
  • "Family Portrait", with Jon Robin Baitz and Emily Whitesell (2006)
  • "Mistakes Were Made, Part One", with Jon Robin Baitz (2006)

Music

A musician, Wright was co-leader of an alternative rock band The Tropicals', whose first album, Live at the Jungle, was released in 1996 . As a member of the band Kangaroo he has released three albums, Phantom, Skyscraper Spaceship and Songs (French).

References
  1. InsiderInsights
  2. "Craig Wright", baylor.edu, accessed June 21, 2012 Archived April 2, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
  3. Wright, Craig (1998). Molly's Delicious A Play in Two Acts. Dramatic Publishing. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-87129-884-3.
  4. Wright, Craig. Orange Flower Water. Dramatists Play Service, ISBN/Code: 978-0-8222-1990-3, accessed July 7, 2012 Archived October 28, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
  5. Orange Flower Water Listing. Archived May 29, 2014, at the Wayback Machine Steppenwolf.org, accessed July 7, 2012
  6. Bacalzo, Dan. "Review. Orange Flower Water", Theatermania.com, April 8, 2005
  7. "Orange Flower Water by Craig Wright | 9780822219903 | Paperback | Barnes & Noble". Barnesandnoble.com. August 28, 2004. Retrieved April 2, 2016.
  8. Stevens, Andrea (April 11, 2005). "When a Couples' Friendship Takes a Turn to Adultery". The New York Times. Retrieved April 12, 2016.
  9. Mann, Iris (April 1, 2013). "'Orange Flower Water' Is Inadequately Realized". Backstage.com. Retrieved April 12, 2016.
  10. Sommer, Elyse. "A CurtainUp Review. The Pavilion". Curtainup.com, September 21, 2005 Archived May 11, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  11. "Summer season 2008", norwalkplus.com Archived May 14, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  12. "Small Casts Big Ideas", Boiseweekly.com Archived October 2, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  13. See, Rich."A CurtainUp Review. Melissa Arctic". Curtainup.com, February 6, 2004 Archived March 25, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
  14. Whiskeyman, Dolores. "A CurtainUp DC Review. Recent Tragic Events", Curtainup.com, September 3, 2002 Archived May 12, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  15. Brantley, Ben."Theater Review; A First Date Blindsided By a Cosmic Event", The New York Times, September 29, 2003
  16. Jones, Kenneth."D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth Says Grace, a World Premiere Tragicomedy by Craig Wright, Oct. 25 – Dec. 19". Playbilledu.com, October 25, 2004
  17. Brantley, Ben. "Theater Review. Grace, With Paul Rudd and Michael Shannon, at Cort Theater" The New York Times, October 4, 2012
  18. Sommer, Elyse."A CurtainUp Review. Blind", curtainup.com, February 21, 2010 Archived August 6, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  19. "Awards Winners". Writers Guild of America. Archived from the original on October 22, 2007. Retrieved October 17, 2007.
  20. Denise Petski. "OWN Sets Megachurch Drama Series From Craig Wright & Lionsgate". Deadline. Retrieved August 26, 2015.
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