Michael Scasserra Biography

a New Jersey-based writer, director and performer. His solo works include B-Movie Mutant Boy at the HBO Workspace/Melrose Theatre in Hollywood, CA and at Luna Stage Company, NJ; Light Above My Head at HERE/The American Living Room, NYC, in association with Tiny Mythic and Lincoln Center Theater; Self-Defense (a comic look at the self-help movement drawn from recorded interviews, self-help books and "pop psychology" magazine articles) at the Ohio Theatre, NYC, as part of Watermark Theater’s WordFire Festival; and White Men/Noir Women, a shared evening with Toni Schlesinger at the West Bank on Theatre Row, NYC. Segments of his plays White Men, Talk/Show, Self-Defense and Lions, Tigers and Bears have been published by Smith and Kraus in the last three editions of The Best Stage Monologues of the Year. Other projects include writing and directing Leaving at the Village Gate; writing and directing eight actors, a cameraman and 16 video monitors for Talk/Show: A Stage Play with Video Simulcast, presented by A.T.O.M.I.C. Theater at the John Houseman Studio Theatre and at the West Bank; and Significant Romance in Compressed Time, presented as part of The Pirandello-Brecht Project at The Miranda Theatre. Talk/Show was recently produced in Atlanta by Barking Dog Theatre and New Vision Space. His plays have been staged by a variety of companies in NJ and NYC including the 42^nd Street Collective, Looking Glass Theatre, Gallery Theatre Company, Sage Theatre Company, and as part of the George Street Playhouse Cabaret. Three of his plays (Lions, Tigers and Bears, Significant Romance in Compressed Time and Leaving) have been finalists in competition at The Actors Theatre of Louisville. His theater criticism and other journalistic work has appeared in The Village Voice, American Theatre, Theater Week, InTheater, Playbill and Performing Arts, among others. He is an elected member of the New York Drama Desk, has spoken at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, and has served as a panelist on the Playwriting/New Theater Works Artist Grants committee for the Massachusetts Cultural Council. He studied at New York University, Columbia University and Rutgers University.