MICHAEL DORN MOODY

Michael Dorn Moody is a contemporary playwright and screenwriter whose work explores history, conflict, and the moral tensions of American life. 

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His plays draw on lived experience and historical research, exploring themes of endurance, ambition, war, and the fracture points within families and nations. Works such as The Shortchanged Review, which examines the psychological aftermath of the Vietnam War, and The Fool, a dramatic portrait of Sir Francis Drake and the Elizabethan age, combine muscular theatrical storytelling with intellectual depth.

 

Moody's stage dramas have been produced nationally and have received significant critical recognition.  

 

His plays have been produced across the United States, including The Shortchanged Review at Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York City, as well as Lincoln Center for which actor T. Miratti won an Obie; The Fool at Image Theatre NYC; at the University of Kansas produced by Colleen Dewhurst; at The Met Theatre in Los Angeles directed by James Gammon and by Acadia Annex Theatre Company in Maine directed by Robert Savina and Amy Waguespack.

 

The writing of The Fool was supported by a National Endowment for the Arts playwrighting grant, and the play was subsequently nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

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His third play, Spill, received a workshop production in Lafayette, Louisiana directed by Robert Savina, and a staged reading at Ensemble Studio Theatre in NYC, directed by Paul Austin. 

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Moody was a founding member of The Magnificent Liars, a Downeast Maine-based theater company described as a "rogue operation," a 'maverick band of drama advocates," and a "loosely affiliated group of theater veterans." 

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In addition to his theater work, Moody has written for film and television. He wrote King of White Lady for Francis Ford Coppola; developed Hard Time for Heroes for HBO and the Vietnam Veterans Ensemble Theatre Company; wrote episodes of St. Elsewhere for NBC and had his original screenplay Paint the Sky optioned for development by 20th Century Fox.

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Between projects in the entertainment industry, Moody supported himself through a series of demanding and often hazardous occupations, including three tours in Vietnam; bridge painting in New York City; ironworking as a "steel gypsy"; commercial fishing in the Bay of Fundy; and service as a Merchant Marine Officer transporting explosive petroleum cargoes.

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From a young age, Moody was drawn to storytelling and performance, a lifelong inclination that evolved into a body of dramatic work grounded in historical research lived experience, and character-driven narrative.

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