Joe Waechter

Joe Waechter

Joe Waechter is a playwright and screenwriter living in Los Angeles.

His plays include: The Hidden People, PROFILES, Lake Untersee, Good Ol Boys, and The Strangler. His work has been developed with or produced by Playwrights Horizons, Guthrie Theatre, Ars Nova, American Repertory Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Trinity Repertory Theatre, The Kennedy Center, O'Neill National Playwrights Conference...
Joe Waechter is a playwright and screenwriter living in Los Angeles.

His plays include: The Hidden People, PROFILES, Lake Untersee, Good Ol Boys, and The Strangler. His work has been developed with or produced by Playwrights Horizons, Guthrie Theatre, Ars Nova, American Repertory Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Trinity Repertory Theatre, The Kennedy Center, O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, PlayPenn, Red Eye Theatre, Workhaus Collective, and the Inkwell, among others. Awards include the AracaWorks Graduate Playwriting Prize, Lucille Lortel Playwriting Fellowship, and a McKnight Advancement Grant and two Jerome Fellowships at the Playwrights’ Center, where he was also a Core Writer and served on the Board of Directors. He has been a resident artist at Hangar Theatre, Tofte Lake Center, SPACE on Ryder Farm (member of Working Farm writers group), and on board an ice-class sailboat the Antigua for The Arctic Circle residency in summer 2014. Joe is currently under commission by Berkeley Repertory Theatre to write BREAKAWAY, a play about fantasy, sexuality, and masculinity in the world of Minnesota high school hockey.

Joe also writes for other medium, including Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and other experimental modes of performance. His headphone operas "Howard Gap Road" and "The Hoot Owl" have been performed around the world and received several awards. In collaboration with interactive producers Tender Claws, Joe wrote on the VR game, "Virtual, Virtual Reality" (winner of the Google Play Award for Best Experience), developed and wrote an artificial-intelligence app, "tendAR" (premiere, 2018 Sundance New Frontiers). He also wrote the forthcoming VR music composition project for Within with OkGo, "Lambchild Superstar" and created an AR intergalactic educational experience for kids, "Clio's Cosmic Quest" for Within's Wonderscope technology.

M.F.A. Brown University

Plays

  • Hidden People
    Life isn’t easy for the world’s first family and their 47 children. When eldest twins Fred and Frieda run away in search of “a more super awesome life”, all hell breaks loose. In this dark, hysterical, and magical saga, Waechter mashes-up creation myths to forge a new story about family, the origin of the world, growing up, and the evil darkness that lurks inside the icy chasms of Niflheim.
  • Good Ol' Boys
    Three Southern businessmen rent a hunting cabin for a weekend of shooting some guns, drinking some beer, and hopefully finding the mysterious giant deer that lurks in the forest. When one of the men brings his son along, things take a turn for the worst. Secrets bubble up to the surface, and with all that testosterone, all that camouflage, and all those bags full of guns, someone’s bound to get hurt.
  • PROFILES
    It's just another night of popcorn and Jeopardy, when Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins receive a phone call that changes their lives forever. Through turns both harrowing and humorous, Profiles explores how an unthinkable act of violence echoes through the lives of the perpetrator's family, as they struggle to find relief and forgiveness in a rapidly disintegrating world.
  • Lake Untersee
    Rocky, a troubled teenager, longs to leave his divorced parents and their dysfunctional relationships behind. Stuck between his mother, a has-been novelist, and his equally oblivious father, Rocky begins to receive love letters written in snow. With nowhere else to turn, he embarks on the adventure of a lifetime to Antarctica’s Lake Untersee, where the love of his life is trapped beneath layers and layers of ancient ice.