Jeffrey Sweet

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Jeffrey Sweet (born 1950) is an American writer, journalist, songwriter and theatre historian. Sweet's parents are James and Vivian Sweet.

Sweet has been a playwright, screenwriter, lyricist, critic, journalist, teacher, theatre historian, and sometime songwriter and director. He is a resident member of Chicago's Victory Gardens Theater, where eleven of his plays -- including Flyovers, The Action Against Sol Schumann, The Value of Names, Berlin '45, With and Without, and Bluff have been produced. His new play, Court-Martial at Fort Devens, opened there in February, 2007.

He also collaborated with Melissa Manchester on a musical called I Sent a Letter to My Love based on the novel by Bernice Rubens. Sweet is also the author of 'Something Wonderful Right Away' (an oral history of Chicago's The Second City troupe), 'The Dramatist's Toolkit' and 'Solving Your Script' (which are texts on playwriting).

Sweet's plays fall into two groups -- those inspired by historical-political subjects and those springing from more personal impulses. The most produced of the former is The Value of Names, a story set against the backdrop of the aftermath of the blacklist. In it, a young actress finds herself facing the prospect of working with the director who named her father in front of HUAC during the McCarthy era. Though it premiered in 1983 (at the Actors Theatre of Louisville), Names has been revived a number of times in recent years, most notably in a series of productions starring Jack Klugman (the latest at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, NJ). Other actors who have played in it include Howard Morris, Ed Asner, Garry Marshall, Hector Elizondo, Shelley Berman, Byrne Piven, Warren Mitchell, Allen Swift, Helen Hunt and Larry Block.

Flyovers, which premiered at Victory Gardens in 1998, represents a more personal project. The story of a film critic who returns to the small town in Ohio where he grew up and encounters threats he thought he left behind years ago, the play anticipated the confrontation between red state and blue state cultures. The original production, directed by Dennis Zacek, starred William Petersen, Amy Morton, Marc Vann and Linda Reiter. Gary Cole and Teddi Sidall took over for Petersen and Morton when the run was extended. The play won a Joseph Jefferson Award for its script, and it was recently published in "Victory Gardens Theater Presents Seven New Plays From the Playwrights Ensemble", an anthology from Northwestern University.

Sweet has also written for other media, including hundreds of hours of television and radio adaptations of some of his plays. His work for the soap opera One Life to Live resulted in a Writers Guild of America Ward for writing for a daytime serial in 1992 and an Emmy nomination. Under the title of "creative consultant," he also co-wrote the adaptation of Hugh Whitemore's Pack of Lies for the Hallmark Hall of Fame. The script, officially credited to the pseudonym Ralph Gallup, was nominated for an Emmy, and the show won a Peabody Award.

Sweet serves as a member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild, is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, and an alumnus of New Dramatists. He contributes a regular column to the magazine, Dramatics.