Oren Safdie

Oren Safdie
Born	(1965-04-20) April 20, 1965 Montreal, Quebec
Occupation	Playwright
Nationality	Canadian
Period	1990s-present
Spouse	M. J. Kang

Oren Safdie (born April 20, 1965) is a Canadian-American-Israeli playwright and screenwriter, and the son of architect Moshe Safdie.

Prior to embarking on a career in writing, he graduated with a master's in architecture from Columbia University. He also received an MFA from Columbia University in fiction writing.^[1] While at Columbia he studied with playwright Romulus Linney and started the West End Gate Theatre Bar.

He also spent a year at Iowa State University where he taught design and studied with Jane Smiley.

His plays include Unseamly, Boycott This!,^[2] False Solution, Checks & Balances,^[3][4][5] The Bilbao Effect, West Bank, UK, The Last Word..., Jews & Jesus,^[6] Fiddler Sub-Terrain,^[7] Hyper-Allergenic, Broken Places, Laughing Dogs, La Compagnie and Private Jokes, Public Places which debuted at the Malibu Stage Co. and went on to play in New York at La MaMa ETC, before transferring to the Center of Architecture for a 5-month run.^[8] It also received productions at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, Wellfleet Harbor Actor's Theatre in Wellfeet, Massachusetts, the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley, California, The New End Theatre^[9] in London, England, and the National Theatre of Romania in Timisoara.

He currently holds the position of the artistic director of the Malibu Stage Co. and is married to actress/playwright M. J. Kang. They have a daughter born in 2008, and divide their time between Venice Beach and Montreal where he is originally from.

He teaches Playwriting at the University of Miami.

Works

Private Jokes, Public Places was a critical off-Broadway hit and was singled out in 2010 by Terry Teachout of the Wall Street Journal as one of the best half-dozen new plays he had seen since he started reviewing.^[10] The play is regularly performed by students at architecture schools to mark the beginning of the year.

The Last Word..., debuted Off-Broadway in 2007 in New York City, starring Daniel J. Travanti in the title role.^[11] Ed Asner did the first reading at The Malibu Stage Co.

West Bank, UK - a musical comedy (Ronnie Cohen: Music & Lyrics) about a Palestinian and Israeli forced to share a rundown rent-controlled apartment - debuted at La MaMa in 2007/08, and was a co-production with the Malibu Stage Co.^[12]

False Solution - the third in a series on contemporary architecture' - opened at La MaMa in 2013.^{[13][14][15][16][17]} The play also ran at the Santa Monica Playhouse in 2014 and starred Daniel J. Travanti.^[18][19][20]

The Bilbao Effect - the second in a series on contemporary architecture - played at the Center for Architecture in New York in May/June 2010.^[21]

Private Jokes, Public Places, The Last Word... and "The Bilbao Effect" are published by Dramatists Play Service. Private Jokes, Public Places is also published by Playwrights Canada Press along with excerpts that appear in several books about design, and is also translated into Romanian and Japanese. False Solution is published by Original Works Publishing.

Checks & Balances made its world premiere at the Rogers Little Theater's Victory Theater^[22] in Rogers, Arkansas, on November 2, 2012.^[23] Safdie selected the Arkansas venue because of a positive experience he had at the theater the previous year. Safdie attended the grand opening of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which was designed by his father, architect Moshe Safdie. While in the area he staged a reading of Private Jokes, Public Places at the Rogers Little Theater.^[22] He was impressed with how the audience in Rogers got jokes that New Yorkers missed.^[23] Safdie noted that "There was a lot of excitement at the theater. The audience was sophisticated, and they got my jokes. I felt there was something happening."^[22]

Unseamly opened to critical acclaim ^{[24][25][26][27][28][29]} at Infinitheatre in Montreal on February 13, 2014, inviting much controversy as the story closely paralleled a sexual harassment case that was brought against Safdie's cousin and CEO of American Apparel, Dov Charney. Controversy only grew after Buzzfeed.com ^[30] wrote a story and published a threatening greeting card Safdie received during the production. Aside from making veiled threats on his family, it also revealed his social security number, which was later implicated in credit card fraud. Unseamly was Safdie's first play to debut in his hometown.

La Compagnie was later turned into Fashion Avenue, a pilot for Castle Rock and CBS.

Safdie wrote the 1998 film You Can Thank Me Later, based on his play Hyper-Allergenic. It stars Ellen Burstyn, Amanda Plummer, Ted Levine, Mark Blum, Mary McDonnell and Geneviève Bujold. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the Newport Film Festival. It was subsequently premiered on Showtime in the United States.

Safdie also co-wrote the 2007 Israeli film Bittersweet, directed by Doron Benvenisti, which played at the Jerusalem and Montreal World Film Festivals.

He is a contributor to Metropolis Magazine,^[31] and has also written for Dwell,^[32] The Forward,^[33] The New Republic,^[34] The Jerusalem Post,^[35] Israel National News,^[36] The Algemeiner,^[37] The Times of Israel,^[38] and Canadian Jewish News.

Reception

Safdie is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the John Golden Fund and the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles.

Two of his plays (Boycott This & Mr. Goldberg Goes To Tel Aviv) were both second Prize winners in the Quebec-wide playwriting contest, Write-On-Q!^[39][40][41]

References