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Tom Jacobson

Tom Jacobson is a playwright who has had more than 60 productions in Los Angeles and around the country, including The Beloved Disciple, Cyberqueer, and Degenerate Art. His adaptations Sperm at Circle X and The Orange Grove at Playwrights Arena were Critic’s Choice in the Los Angeles Times. He has been literary manager of The Theatre @ Boston Court and Celebration Theatre, a founding member of Playwrights Ink, and a board member of Cornerstone Theater Company. He teaches playwriting and related courses for UCLA Extension.

Personal Life

Born in Denver, Tom has also lived in Pennsylvania, Florida, Oklahoma and Illinois (Chicago) where he graduated from Northwestern University. He received an MFA in Playwriting from UCLA. He is a member of Lutheran Church of the Master where in 2003 he was married to the artist Ramone Munoz. Tom is the Senior Vice President of Advancement at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Professional Career

Tom is a playwright who has had more than 60 productions in Los Angeles and around the country, including The Beloved Disciple, Cyberqueer, and Degenerate Art. His adaptations Sperm at Circle X and The Orange Grove at Playwrights Arena were Critic’s Choice in the Los Angeles Times. He has been literary manager of The Theatre @ Boston Court and Celebration Theatre, a founding member of Playwrights Ink, and a board member of Cornerstone Theater Company. He teaches playwriting and related courses for UCLA Extension. In 2005 he collaborated with The Road Theatre Company on a sold-out, extended run of Bunbury following their 1998 production of Tainted Blood (directed by Michael Michetti, winner of seven Valley Theatre League Awards) and their 2004 production of Ouroboros (directed by Michael Michetti, Garland Award for playwriting, LA Weekly Awards for playwriting and Production of the Year). Bunbury was nominated for a GLAAD Award and two Ovation Awards and received a Ticketholder Award and a Garland Award for playwriting. In 2006 Bunbury was recorded by LA Theatre Works (starring Peter Paige of Queer as Folk) and was broadcast on KPCC and other radio stations nationwide. Subsequently Bunbury was produced by the Diversionary Theatre in San Diego, Department of Theatre and Dance at Pomona College, and Long Beach Playhouse Studio Theatre. He is currently working on West Hollywood Musical (working title) for Cornerstone Theater Company and The Chinese Massacre (Annotated), a commission from the LA History Project and Circle X Theatre Company that received a National Endowment for the Arts grant and was workshopped in June 2008. His most recent world premieres are The Friendly Hour at The Road Theatre Company in September 2008, a production that won an LA Weekly Award for Best Ensemble, and The Twentieth-Century Way at The Theatre @ Boston Court (Critic's Choice in Back Stage West). Ensemble Studio Theatre-LA plans to produce House of the Rising Son in March 2011.

Awards and Recognition

2006 - 17th Annual GLAAD Media Award Nominee for Outstanding Los Angeles Theater for Bunbury

Charity

Shows

2010 - The Twentieth-Century Way, The Theatre @ Boston Court, Pasadena, CA (Based on a little-known incident in LA history, this theatrical thrill ride explores the collision of reality and fantasy as two actors juggle various roles to entrap homosexuals for "social vagrancy" in the public restrooms of 1914 Long Beach.)

2008 - The Friendly Hour, The Road Theatre Company, North Hollywood, CA (Based on the actual minutes of a women's club formed in rural South Dakota in 1934, this poignant comedy charts 70 years of personal and national history, from skinning skunks and julebukking in the 30s to restoring native prairie in the new millennium.)

2005 - Bunbury, The Road Theatre Company, North Hollywood, CA (When he discovers he is only a fictitious character in The Importance of Being Earnest, Bunbury joins forces with Rosaline, Romeo's never-seen obsession from Romeo and Juliet. Together, they win back their loves and change the world by changing classic literature. Winner of a Ticketholder Award and Garland Award for Best New Play, Critic's Choice in the Los Angeles Times)

2005 - The Orange Grove, Playwrights Arena, Los Angeles, CA (A small Lutheran choir in its death-throes provides the backdrop for this Chekhovian warning of the impending doom of mainline Protestantism in America. Laughter through tears with nice lemon bars. Critic's Choice in the Los Angeles Times.)

2004 - Sperm, directed by Tim Wright and Tara Flynn, world premiere at Circle X Theatre Company, Los Angeles, CA (Pulled from the stomach of a whale, an American whaler is bleached blind and becomes a modern Tiresias in the court of Louis XVI. He seduces Marie Antoinette and sets the king on a path to destroy France and ultimately humankind. A tragicomedy in rhymed couplets. Critic's Choice in the Los Angeles Times.)

2004 - Ouroboros, The Road Theatre Company, North Hollywood, CA (Two American couples get caught in a chronological palindrome on a trip to Italy. Stigmata, alchemy, adultery and St. Catherine of Siena's severed head plague a nun and a minister in this circular love story that is a comedy if performed forward and a tragedy if performed backward. Winner of Best New Play and Production of the Year LA Weekly Awards.)

2004 - Conserving Melissa, Renegade Theatre Experiment, San Jose, CA

1998 - Son of Othello, Celebration Theatre, Los Angeles, CA (A modern African-American academic plunges into a 400 year-old intrigue when he finds a 16th-century Italian diary that mentions William Shakespeare. Monks, pirates, eunuchs and actors conspire to rewrite literary history.)

1996 - Cyberqueer, Celebration Theatre, Los Angeles, CA (A lonely college professor finds sex, danger and romance on the Internet in this comedy the Los Angeles Times called "dazzling" and the L.A. Weekly called "menacingly funny." A Critic's Choice in Drama-Logue.)

1994 - The Beloved Disciple, The Complex, Los Angeles, CA (Christopher Marlowe, sixteenth-century author of Doctor Faustus, was murdered at the age of 29. This tragicomedy speculates that his death was tied to his scandalous play about the relationship between Jesus and the disciple John. Pick of the Week and nominated for an L.A. Weekly Award.)

1991 - Degenerate Art, The Complex, Los Angeles, CA (An Expressionist artist battles Nazis and his own ardent nationalism when his art is declared "degenerate" by the totalitarian regime.)

1990 - Tainted Blood, Main Street Theatre, Houston, TX (Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, and Arthur Conan Doyle use logic and religion to fend off a seductive vampire in this fang-in-cheek comedy/thriller. Pick of the Week in the LA Weekly, and winner of seven Valley Theatre League Awards.)

Published Plays

January 1, 2009, Ouroboros, Paperback, Broadway Play Pub, ISBN-10: 0881454192

June 1, 2008, Bunbury, Paperback, Broadway Play Pub, ISBN-10: 0881453889

February 2, 2007, Bunbury: A Serious Play for Trivial People (Dramatized), Audiobook, L.A. Theatre Works

References

External Links