Michael Weller

Michael Weller (born 1942) is a Brooklyn-based playwright, who is known for his plays, including Moonchildren and Loose Ends, as well as for his screenplays, including the screenplay for Ragtime, for which he was nominated for an Oscar, and for Hair, directed by Miloš Forman.Weller has lived in Nevada, London and New York. He attended private schools and studied at Brandeis University. In the late 1960s he moved to London to follow his musical ambitions, but once there he became attracted to theatre. The director Alan Schneider, who was an early collaborator with the playwrights Samuel Beckett and Edward Albee, saw a London run-through of Weller’s play Moonchildren, and Schneider then in 1971 directed it in Washington and on Broadway. Moonchildren subsequently had an acclaimed run off-Broadway at the Theatre de Lys in 1973 and 1974. Schneider also staged Weller’s play Loose Ends on Broadway at Circle in the Square Theatre, after it had premiered in Washington.Weller is one of the founders of the Cherry Lane Theatres acclaimed Mentor Project, which pairs pre-eminent playwrights with emerging playwrights for a season-long mentorship. In 2005, the Broken Watch Theatre Company in New York named its performance space The Michael Weller Theatre in honor of his tremendous accomplishments.Michael Weller attended Brandeis University in Massachusetts, where he studied music composition, then began writing plays. Weller is currently a faculty member at The New School for Drama in New York City.Weller is described as writting with insight and objectivity about a characters who came of age in the time of the war in Vietnam, and he has also written plays that are more personal and deal with matters of the heart.Weller has been active in the Dramatists Guild of America, battling for the rights of playwrights.

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