About the Play and Playwright

BRIEF SYNOPSIS:
HEADSET is a farce about the technical side of the theatre. The entire play takes place in the Light Booth of the Chicago-Ensemble-Repertory-Group-Theatre-Project, on the final night of the Company’s questionable production of HAMLET. The story of HAMLET, unfolding unseen in front of the light booth, is mirrored inside the booth as Ross, the technical director, comes face to face with the new board operator: his step-father Charlie. It’s not a happy reunion.As father and step-son attempt to work out their troubled relationship they must deal with the crises befalling the production: The cast comes down with food poisoning; Yorick’s skull is missing; the police want to shut them down, and worst of all, the critic from the Chicago Tribune chooses this night to review the show. The techies decide there is only one way to prevent disaster: the critic must die.

William Missouri Downs

William Missouri Downs holds an M.F.A. in acting from the University of Illinois and an
M.F.A. in screenwriting from U.C.L.A.  He studied playwriting at the Circle Rep. in New York.

He has authored a dozen plays, including Kabuki Medea which won the Bay Area Critics Playwrights Award. Bill’s other plays include Kabuki Faust, Little Family Secrets, The Voice Lesson, and Dead White Males which was a semi-finalist in the Eugene O’Neill competition.

Bill has had over 80 productions from New York to Singapore, from the Kennedy Center to Berkeley Rep.  He is also the co-author of the books Playwriting: From Formula To Form published by Harcourt and Screenplay: Writing the Picture published by Silman and James. He has also written several articles for the Dramatist and the WGA Journal.  In Hollywood, he wrote for such NBC sitcoms as My Two Dads, Amen, and Fresh Prince of Bel Air, won the Jack Nicholson Award for Screenwriting and sold the movie Executive Privilege to Tri-Star.

Bill left Hollywood to concentrate on playwriting. He is a member of the Denver Centre For the Performing Arts’ Playwright’s Unit and lives in windy Wyoming. Currently, Bill is writing a new introduction to theatre book for Wadsworth and a new playwriting book for Silman and James.