John+Patrick+Shanley

=__**John Patrick Shanley**__=

**Early Life**
Born in 1950, Shanley grew up the youngest of five children in an Irish-Catholic family whose home was in the Bronx neighborhood of East Tremont. His father, a meatpacker, was an Irish immigrant, while Shanley's mother was herself the daughter of Irish immigrants. The East Tremont streets were home to similar working-class Irish and Italian families. "It was extremely anti-intellectual and extremely racist and none of this fit me," the play-wright revealed in an interview with Alex Witchel that appeared in the //New York Times Magazine.// He recalled being "in constant fistfights from the time I was six," though he asserted he rarely picked the fight himself. "People would look at me and become enraged at the sight of me," he explained. "I believe that the reason was they could see that I saw them."  Shanley spent the first eight years of his formal education at St. Anthony's, a Roman Catholic school run by the Sisters of Charity religious order. He went on the all-boys Cardinal Spellman High School, where he rebelled against the strict, no-nonsense priests who taught at the school. During his two years there, Shanley spent every single week in after-school detention, until he was asked to leave. Instead of a public high school in the Bronx, he opted to attend a private school in New Hampshire that was affiliated with the Catholic church.  At the Thomas Moore school, away from the Bronx, Shanley began to thrive. His teachers encouraged his writing talents, which started around the age of eleven, and as a teen he wrote reams of poetry. When he graduated, he went on to New York University, but left after a semester of poor grades. He enlisted in the Marine Corps which, somewhat perversely, he liked for its Catholic-school style of discipline. He returned to New York University after his Vietnam War service ended, and in 1977, the year he turned 27, graduated as the valedictorian of his class.  ===Career===  Career as off-Broadway playwright began in 1978 with //Saturday Night at the War// ; a collection of one-act plays were staged in 1982 as //Welcome to the Moon// ; made London theater debut with //Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,// 1984; first two screenplays, //Moon-struck// and //Five Corners,// both produced by Hollywood studios in 1987; made screen directing debut with //Joe Versus the Volcano,// 1990; made Broadway debut with //Doubt, a parable,// 2005. Also author of the teleplays //Danny i Roberta,// 1993, and //Live from Baghdad,// 2002.  ([|http://www][|.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2006-Ra-Z/Shanley-John-Patrick.html])  ||

**Stage Plays:**

 * ====//Welcome to the Moon// (1982)====
 * ====//Danny and the Deep Blue Sea// (1983)====
 * ====//Savage In Limbo// (1984)====
 * ====//The Dreamer Examines His Pillow// (1985)====
 * ====//Italian American Reconciliation// (1986)====
 * ====//Women of Manhattan// (1986)====
 * ====//All For Charity// (1987)====
 * ====//Italian American Reconciliation// (1988)====
 * ====//The Big Funk// (1990)====
 * ====//Beggars in the House of Plenty// (1991)====
 * ====//What Is This Everything?// (1992)====
 * ====//Kissing Christine// (1995)====
 * ====//Missing Marisa// (1995)====
 * ====//Four Dogs and a Bone// (1993)====
 * ====//The Wild Goose// (1995)====
 * ====//Psychopathia Sexualis// (1998)====
 * ====//Where's My Money?// (2001)====
 * ====//Cellini// (2001)====
 * ====//Dirty Story// (2003)====
 * ====//Doubt: A Parable// (2004)====
 * ====//Sailor's Song// (2004)====
 * ====//Defiance// (2005)====
 * ====//Romantic Poetry// (2007) - co written with Henry Krieger====
 * ====//Pirate// (2010)====
 * ====** Filmography: **====
 * ====//Moonstruck// (1987)====
 * ====//Five Corners// (1987)====
 * ====//The January Man// (1989)====
 * ====//Joe Versus the Volcano// (1990; directed by Shanley)====
 * ====//Alive// (1993)====
 * ====//We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story// (1993)====
 * ====// Congo // (1995)====
 * ====//Live From Baghdad// (2002) (TV, Emmy nomination)====
 * ====// The Waltz of the Tulips // (2006)====
 * ====//Doubt// (2008; directed by Shanley and adapted from his play of the same title)==== ||

 **Links:**  []  []  []