Biography of Joe Besecker

Joe Besecker There have been over thirty productions of his 25 full length plays. Tennessee in the Summer (suggested by the life of Tennessee Williams) received its third Los Angeles production directed by Barbara Bain of Mission Impossible fame. It was nominated for two Los Angeles Ovation Awards and played for nine months. Bee-Eye (his play based on Edward Albee) was nominated for three Bay Area Critics Circle Awards, including Best Production. He also won a Los Angeles Drama-logue Award for Achievement in Writing for this play. Mary in the Hydrangea Bush (about a straight 4-way) played to critical acclaim at the Theatre of Yugen. His play The Way Light Strikes Filled Mason Jars played the San Francisco Fringe in 2002 and won The Best of the Fringe. Other plays by Joe at the Fringe were Crime and Variations, his play about Stephen Sondheim (2003), Paper Dolls, about how gay men in San Francisco dealt with the AIDS crisis in the 80's (2005), Visiting Bertha, which dealt with the characters of Tennessee Williams' The Fugitive Kind (2006). The Way Light Strikes Filled Mason Jars played at the Edinburgh Fringe in August (2007). His play Tennessee in the Summer is part of the new season at the New Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. It opens January 2009. He has just completed his new play The Play Reading Play concerning the first reading of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Eight of his plays have been published by Dialogus Publishing. He has recently completed his screen play Cezanne's Apples.