Oren Safdie

Oren Safdie attended the Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University before turning his attention to playwriting. After receiving his MFA - also from Columbia - he was awarded a Woolrich Fellowship, which he used to launch The West End Fate Theatre Bar on New York's Upper Westside. He was a playwright-in-residence at La MaMa, and artistic director the Malibu Stage Co. where his off-Broadway/London hit Private Jokes, Public Places first debuted. (The Wall Street Journal mentioned it as one of the top six new plays of the last decade.) His next play, The Last Word, also moved off-Broadway, starring two-time Emmy Award Winner Daniel J. Tranvanti ("Hill Street Blues"). Other productions include the recent Montreal and Off-Broadway hit Unseamly, False Solution, Mr. Goldberg Goes To Tel Aviv, Checks & Balances, The Bilbao Effect, musicals West Bank, UK, Jews & Jesus and Fiddler Sub-Terrain with Ronnie Cohen, and La Compagnie, which he developed into a ½-hour pilot of Castle Roch/CBS. As a screenwriter, Oren scripted the film You Can Thank Me Later starring Ellen Burstyn, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Newport Film Festival; and the Israeli film Bittersweet, which play the Jerusalem and Montreal World Film Festivals. Oren has contributed essays to Metropolis, Dwell, Beyond, Wipe, The Forward, Jerusalem Post, Times Of Israel, The Algemeiner, The National Post and The New Republic. Playwrights Canada Press, Dramatists Play Service, Broadway Play Publishing and Original Works Publishing have published his plays, and he is the recipient of numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, The John Golden Foundation and The Graham Foundation. Things To Do In Munich will have its world premiere at Arkansas Public Theatre in Rogers in November, 2018. Oren has taught at the University of Miami and Douglas College in Vancouver.