Biography

Samuel D. Hunter

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Samuel D. Hunter grew up in Moscow, Idaho. His full-length plays include The Whale (Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, GLAAD Media Award, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play), A Case for the Existence of God (New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play), Greater Clements (Drama Desk Nomination for Best Play, Outer Critics Circle Honoree), Lewiston/Clarkston (Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), A Bright New Boise (Obie Award, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), The Few, A Great Wilderness, Rest, Pocatello, The Healing, and The Harvest, among others. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, an Otis Guernsey New Voices Award, the Sky Cooper Prize, the PONY/Lark Fellowship, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Idaho. A forthcoming film adaptation of The Whale, written for the screen by Hunter, directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Brendan Fraser, is set to be released by A24 Films. His work has been developed at the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, Seven Devils, and PlayPenn. Two published anthologies of his work are available from TCG books, a third is forthcoming. He is a member of New Dramatists and a current Resident Playwright at the Signature Theater in New York. He holds degrees in playwriting from NYU, The Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and Juilliard.
- IMDb mini biography by: Samuel D. Hunter

Born in 1981 in Pullman, Washington, and grew up in Moscow, Idaho.
In 2014, Hunter was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for his work as a playwright.
Taught expository writing at a public university in New Jersey.

[re favorite episode of The Twilight Zone (1959)] "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" taught me the value of a good old-fashioned reversal. The obvious commentary on McCarthyism was completely lost on me as a kid, but what stuck with me so much was [Rod]Serling's ability to write a reversal so strong that it felt like the entire world was shifting beneath the characters' feet. We buy into the panic along with the characters, so when the camera zooms out and the residents of Maple Street are revealed to be the true monsters, we're revealed to be monsters as well. It taught me that a good reversal sort of bounces the story right back into the audience's lap.

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