photo by Peter Cunningham
Jonathan Reynolds
also by the author:
Sidekick
VITREOUS FLOATERS
THE SCROTUM MONOLOGUES (one-act)
LINES COMPOSED ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, PART II (one-act)
GENIUSES
STYNE AFTER STYNE (musical)
WHOOPEE! (musical, adapter)
Tunnel Fever or The Sheep is Out
Escape (play for television)
Micki and Maude (screenplay)
Switching Channels (screenplay)
Leonard Part 6 (screenplay)
My Stepmother is an Alien (screenplay, co-author)
The Distinguished Gentleman (co-author)
Raised in New York City, Jonathan Reynolds trained as an actor at Denison University under William O Brasmer, at The Eagles Mere Playhouse under Alvina Krause, and at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). In 1967, he left the cast of <MI>Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead<D> halfway through its Broadway run to join the presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy. He stayed with the McCarthy campaign through the Chicago convention and then went on to become press representative for the congressional candidate Stanley Sheinbaum of Santa Barbara.
Following that tumultuous year, he became a producer for David Frost's television show and then for Dick Cavett's. His first plays, Yanks 3 Detroit 0 Top of the 7th and Rubbers, were produced at the American Place Theatre in New York in 1975, and on the basis of those two one-acts, Francis Coppola invited him to the Philippines to write the book about the making of Apocalypse Now. However, what was conceived as a three-month project soon threatened to be a life's work, and he left to write the play, GENIUSES, based in part on the film, which was produced at Playwrights Horizons in 1981. Several years of movie work followed, and he returned to the New York stage with the controversial STONEWALL JACKSON'S HOUSE in 1997.
While working on two additional plays and a musical, he currently writes a bi-monthly column about food for the New York Times and is the Treasurer of the Dramatists Guild, the organization of professional playwrights, composers, and lyricists. He lives in New York and has two distinguished sons, Frank and Eddie.
YANKS 3 DETROIT 0 TOP OF THE SEVENTH