I was born in a little log cabin hospital in the backwoods of Newark, New Jersey... or so the legend goes. So momentous was the event of my birth that the New York Times marked the occasion by running a front page photo of Dwight Eisenhower (who, coincidentally, just happened to be President at the time). For the benefit of those that have no idea who Dwight Eisenhower was or who somehow equate him with a time period roughly equivalent to that of Ulysses S. Grant, let me assure you that Grant was a lot more fun on a bivouac.

Well, now that we've cleared that up, on to less pressing matters.

The road to "produced playwright" was an indirect one which began, inauspiciously enough, in television news. Following graduation in 1981 from The American University -- which, contrary to popular opinion is NOT located in Beirut but rather in Washington, D.C. (city motto: "Come be our mayor when you get paroled.") -- I set out for my first on-camera job at a TV station in Corpus Christi, Texas (state motto: "Three chairs; no waiting for lethal injection."). A couple of years later, I took a job at a TV station in Tucson, Arizona, where I currently live (personal motto: "Does she have a sister?"). Working as a TV reporter for ten years provided me with plenty of interesting experiences -- mostly in lieu of money. And my training as a storyteller in TV news helped me develop a conversational style of writing that seemed to translate quite naturally to dramatic dialogue. So, when, at the wunderkind age of 30, I saw an advertisement for a playwriting competition, I said to myself, "Hey, I can write something as good as that last piece of crap I saw on stage." And, so, began the career of a new playwright.

My very first play, a one-act comedy titled "The Dividing Line," was a winner in Tucson's Invisible Theatre 1989 playwriting competition. Inspired by that early success, I continued to write plays of varying lengths, styles and genres, including some in which I have had the chutzpah to include original songs I've written. My total count of authored plays is now in excess of 20, some of which have been fully produced, most of which have been presented in some public venue and a few of which have won awards. In 1996 I received a playwriting fellowship from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and in the following year I was a finalist in the National Playwrights Competition at the Eugene O'Neill Theater. Additionally, I have acted in various stage productions, have been on various arts related councils and committees and also have served two terms as the president of The Old Pueblo Playwrights, an organization dedicated to helping writers improve their craft.

So, where's a nice boy from New Jersey to go from here? Well, come this fall, I'm entering my first year of law school. This, of course has nothing to do with playwriting. I only mention it so you know that, if any of this material turns up on some other web site, I'll be prepared to haul someone's butt into court faster than you can say "Who was Dwight Eisenhower?"

Rich Amada© ...*END

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