John Steppling is an original founding member of the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival, a two-time NEA recipient, Rockefeller Fellow in theatre, and PEN-West winner for playwriting. Plays produced in LA, NYC, SF, Louisville, and at universities across the US, as well in Warsaw, Lodz, Paris, London and Krakow. Taught screenwriting and curated the cinematheque for five years at the Polish National Film School in Lodz, Poland. Plays include The Shaper, Dream Coast, Standard of the Breed, The Thrill, Wheel of Fortune, Dogmouth, and Phantom Luck, which won the 2010 LA Award for best play. Film credits include 52 Pick-up (directed by John Frankenheimer, 1985) and Animal Factory (directed by Steve Buscemi, 1999). A collection of his plays was published in 1999 by Sun & Moon Press as Sea of Cortez and Other Plays. His collection of essays on aesthetics: Aesthetic Resistance and Disinterest was published by Mimesis Press in 2016. He also hosts a podcast called Aesthetic Resistance.
Articles and Interviews
Man of Conviction: John Steppling — Playwright, Screenwriter and Teacher
John Steppling on theater, ‘Fever Dreams’
Łódź. Marian Opania w warsztacie Johna Stepplinga
cut to the brains A Meditation on William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Lear
Stage Review : Steppling Gives Size To Characters In ‘Shaper’
INTERVIEW : JOHN STEPPLING // CINEMATHEQUE
Elmore Leonard; John Steppling
Theater review: ‘Phantom Luck’ at The Lost Studio
THE GHOSTS OF GAMBLERS PAST AND PRESENT AND NO FUTURE
“Wheel” spins at furious, dizzying pace in Steppling’s challenging drama
Stage Review : The Undersea World Of ‘Dream Coast’
The Thrill of Creation, Out on Theater’s Edge
Legit Reviews: Wheel of Fortune
The Exhaustion of Latency: Thoughts on Von Trier’s ‘Melancholia’
