GORDON FARRELL (playwright, LIFESPAN OF A FACT) Trained as a playwright at the Yale School of Drama, Gordon received an MFA in 1986 and went from there to work with major Hollywood studios, initially as a story analyst for Warner Brothers and Columbia Pictures, and eventually as a screenwriter. He has written for hire and sold screenplays to Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers, MGM, and ITC. He has worked with Robert Simonds (producer of “The Wedding Singer,” “Molly’s Game,” “Mile 22”); Neal Moritz (producer of “XXX,” “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “Fast and Furious”) and Bruce Berman (producer of “The Matrix,” “Three Kings,” “Mad Max: Fury Road”). Working in independent film, Gordon has written for and sold projects to NYC indie producer Norman Twain (producer, “Lean on Me,” “Boycott,” “My Dog Tulip”). Gordon’s first independent screenplay, “Girls Who Smoke,” premiered in 2011. It went on to be an official selection at over a dozen film festivals, ultimately winning the Audience Choice Award in Seattle at the Post Alley Film Festival. As a playwright, from 2009 to 2013, Gordon worked with dozens of women on New York’s Lower East Side who wanted to tell their personal stories on stage. The series of monologue plays that grew out of it was called IN THE RED ROOM/EVERY WOMAN DANCES FOR SOMEONE. In May 2019 the fully dramatized version, GIRLS WHO WALKED ON GLASS, played to SRO houses and rave reviews in Buffalo and is scheduled to transfer to New York City in 2020. His other plays have been produced in San Francisco, at the Alleyway Theatre, at the Yale School of Drama, and at Primary Stages in New York. He is the author of “The Power of the Playwright’s Vision,” published by Heinemann Press in 2001. It has been translated internationally and become a standard playwriting text at colleges and universities in North America, Europe, and Asia.