Profile

Jonathan Dorf

Playwright/ YouthPLAYS Managing Partner,
YouthPLAYS

Contact Details

YouthPLAYS
Ribbons

Bio

I am a playwright, screenwriter, teacher and script consultant. For more information, visit https://jonathandorf.com.

As a playwright, I've written a number of widely produced plays that make their home at Playscripts, including: 4 A.M. (and its sequel/companion, The Magic Hour), Declaration, Harry's Hotter at Twilight, High School (non) Musical, Thank You for Flushing My Head in the Toilet and other rarely used expressions, After Math, Just Add Zombies and Rumors of Polar Bears.

I co-founded YouthPLAYS (https://www.youthplays.com), a publisher of over 400 plays and musicals for young actors and audiences, and among my plays there are Dear Chuck, Me, My Selfie & I, From Shakespeare with Love?, the full-length versions of The Locker Next 2 Mine, Harry's Hotter at Twilight and Rumors of Polar Bears.

Additional plays are at Brooklyn Publishers, Heuer, and Original Works, with monologues in collections by Meriwether and Smith & Kraus.

As a teacher and guest artist, I have taught workshops at ITF, the EdTA Annual Conference, the AATE conference, and state Thespian festivals in AL, AR, AZ, CA, FL, GA, IA, IN, KS, MI, MO, NJ, NV, OH, PA, TN and TX, and at over two dozen schools. I formerly directed the theatre program at The Haverford School (PA), have served as Visiting Associate Professor in the MFA playwriting and children's literature programs at Hollins University, and as the US cultural envoy to Barbados. My teaching travels have taken me across the US, as well as to Canada, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia. I am a member of the Teaching Artist Alliance.

I authored Young Playwrights 101, a how-to book on playwriting geared to young writers and those who teach them, and spent years teaching playwriting online at Script University (which still uses the course I created). I was also the longtime playwriting expert for software-maker Final Draft and for The Writers Store, for whom I created the popular website, Playwriting101.com. I am chair emeritus of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, the service and support organization for playwrights in greater Los Angeles, and I am a longtime member of the Dramatists Guild, serving on the Guild's Education Committee.

My focus in my writing in the last two decades has been on plays for teens, as I believe that they are a talented but underserved group. My goal is to create material that excites and challenges them, and I'd love to talk to you about creating something for your group or visiting you to teach playwriting at your school or conference!

Education

UCLA
Los Angeles, California, United States
MFA, 2002
Playwriting

Harvard College
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
BA, 1993
Special Concentrations: Dramatic Writing and Literature

Job History

YouthPLAYS
Managing Partner
Los Angeles, CA, United States
January 2009 - present

Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights
Chair
January 2004 - January 2021