William Missouri Downs has written over twenty full-length plays and won numerous playwriting awards. He has twice been a finalist at the Eugene O’Neill (Mad Gravity and How To Steal A Picasso) Downs’s plays have been produced by The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, The InterAct Theatre in Philadelphia, The San Diego Rep, The Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Salt Lake City Acting Company, the Actors Theatre of Charlotte, the International Theatre Festival in Israel, the Stadt Theater Walfischgasse in Austria, the Jewish Theatre of Toronto, The Bloomington Playwright’s Project, the Detroit Rep, the New York City Fringe Festival, the Durban Performing Arts Center in South Africa, the Daehakro Arts Theater in Seoul South Korea and over 150 other theaters worldwide. In Hollywood, he started as a script secretary on NBC’s Moonlighting (Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd), and worked his way up to staff writer on the sitcom My Two Dads (Paul Reiser). He also wrote episodes of Amen (Sherman Hemsley) and Fresh Prince Of Bel Air (Will Smith). In addition, he won the Jack Nicholson Award for screenwriting, sold a movie to Ron Howard’s Imagine Films and optioned another to Filmways. He is also a member of The Writers Guild (WGA). In addition he has directed over 40 plays and acted in 40 more. He has MFA in acting from University of Illinois and MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA. He was trained in playwriting at the Circle Rep in New York.
