Sean’s Writing Career: Plays, Films, TV

Summer of ’70, soon to be released to festivals, is a film I shot at the Jersey Shore. I wrote, directed, and played the character “Bruce.” The cast is filled with many of my friends, some of the best actors in New York. It’s based on my feature script Imitate the Sun, which won Hollywood’s esteemed American Accolades Award. We are planning to shoot the feature within the next two years. My script, Serious Moonlight, was a Finalist in the Writer’s Foundation Screenplay Competition, and optioned for production. Another of my scripts, Breakfast in Paris, was a Semi-Finalist in FadeIn Magazine’s Best Screenplay Competition. And I’ve recently completed a new one, a comedy, The British Are Coming. I’m currently shopping a TV pilot I wrote called King Dollar, based on my experience as a performer/writer on a rather surreal TV show called Basil Bassett Bingo.

There is an Angel in Las Vegas (published) won the Washington D.C. Source Theater’s “Best New Dramatist” prize in 1986. It was produced at the Source Theater where it won three more awards in the Washington Theater Festival. It was later produced by N.Y.’s Circle Rep Lab, and then Off Broadway with N.Y.’s Playwrights Preview Productions (currently Urban Stages). It was later optioned for Broadway.

Who Collects The Pain (published) won Playwrights Preview’s (Urban Stages) “Emerging Playwright Award” in 1993. They produced it Off-Broadway at the Mazur Theatre. Another production ran at NYC’s Shapiro Theater. And it was later produced again in NYC at Theatre for the New City.

Kidnapped (published) received the Best Play of the Year award by NYC’s WorkShop Theatre. It was first produced by Circle Rep Lab in NYC. It was then produced by the Miranda Theater Co. in NYC. A later production ran at NYC’s Workshop Theatre. And in the Spring of 2025, it will open in Toronto at The King Black Box Theatre.

New Truck For Paulie (published) was selected as “Best New American Play” in 1994 in North Carolina’s Southern Appalachian Repertory Theater Competition. It was first produced at the Southern Appalachian Rep. It was produced again in 2023 at the California Stage in Sacramento. It has recently been chosen by The Drama Notebook to be distributed, for production, throughout the American school system.

Broken Birds (published) was nominated for Best New One-Act in the Samuel French Festival.  I acted in the festival production. It was later produced in Dublin, Ireland, a co-production of the Axis Ballymun Arts Centre and Bewley’s Café Theatre. I directed it in Feb. 2020 with the SOOP Theatre in Pelham, N.Y., where it won 2^nd Prize in their national One Act Festival.

World of Sinatras (published in English, also in French), another full-length play, was first produced in 2013 at NYC’s Arclight Theatre, by the Project Rushmore Theatre Company.  It received a grant from the Pilgrim Project and another from the Puffin Foundation.  It was also nominated for Best New American Play by the Southern Appalachian Rep. It had extensive readings at La Mama, the WestBank Café, the Southern Appalachian Rep, and with Project Rushmore. It has just been translated into French by the Baz’Arts Theatre in Metz, France, awaiting production.

The Knitting Club (published), a recent one-act, won 2^nd prize in L.A.’s FirstStage’s national Best New One-Act Competition. It was performed in their Best New One-Act Festival in December of 2013. And produced at the SOOP Theatre, in Pelham, NY, in their Best One-Act of 2022 festival. I played one of the leads.

The Unraveling  was selected for the 2019 Elia Kazan Festival at NYC’s Actors Studio. It received a grant from the Puffin Foundation and is now also a screenplay, with plans to shoot the film in 2026.

Yearn, another one-act, was a finalist in the 2013 national Dubuque Fine Arts One- Act Playwriting Competition. 

Wound won First Prize for Drama in the 2016 Writer’s Digest Competition. It was a Semi-Finalist for the O’Neill Playwrights Conference. It has had readings in NYC with Urban Stages, and the Project Rushmore Theatre.

Miss Hollywood, a recent play, won NETC’s esteemed Aurand Harris Playwriting award in 2020.  It opened in Silverado, CA, at the Hawk Theatre, in 2021. It was workshopped extensively with The Town Players in Pittsfield, MA, and with the NETC. It was recently selected by the Drama Notebook to be distributed to schools across America, for production. 

Teenagers in Love, another recent play, had its World Premiere in NYC at the Chain Theatre Main Stage, in 2023.

American Roulette, a novel, chronicles the very vibrant personal, professional and romantic life of a young TV star and writer in NYC in the 1980s just as the forces of crime, crack, homelessness, and AIDS begin to take siege in Manhattan.