This is a list of notable

Jewish American American Jews or Jewish Americans are American citizens who are Jewish, whether by religion, ethnicity, culture, or nationality. Today the Jewish community in the United States consists primarily of Ashkenazi Jews, who descend from diaspora Je ...

playwrights. For other Jewish Americans, see Lists of Jewish Americans. *

David Adjmi David Adjmi (born 1973) is an American playwright. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the inaugural Steinberg Playwright Award, a Bush Artists Fellowship, and the Kesselring Prize for Drama. Life Adjmi grew up in a ...

Lynn Ahrens Lynn Ahrens (born October 1, 1948) is an American writer and lyricist for the musical theatre, television and film. She has collaborated with Stephen Flaherty for many years. She won the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Awa ...

Sholom Aleichem ) , birth_date = , birth_place = Pereiaslav, Russian Empire , death_date = , death_place = New York City, U.S. , occupation = Writer , nationality = , period = , genre = Novels, sh ...

Woody Allen Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing ...

(born 1935), film director, writer, actor, and comedian *

Jacob M. Appel Jacob M. Appel (born February 21, 1973) is an American author, poet, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic.Nagamatsu, Sequoia "A Few Words with the Ubiquitous Jacob M. Appel" ''Prince Mincer'' Journal http://primemincer.com/ confirmed ...

George Axelrod George Axelrod (June 9, 1922 – June 21, 2003) was an American screenwriter, producer, playwright and film director, best known for his play ''The Seven Year Itch'' (1952), which was adapted into a film of the same name starring Marilyn Mon ...

Jeff Baron Jeff Baron is an American novelist, playwright and screenwriter currently living in Manhattan. He is the author of ''I Represent Sean Rosen'' and ''Sean Rosen Is Not for Sale'', published by Greenwillow/HarperCollins and the ''Electro-Pup'' seri ...

S. N. Behrman Samuel Nathaniel Behrman (; June 9, 1893 – September 9, 1973) was an American playwright, screenwriter, biographer, and longtime writer for ''The New Yorker''. His son is the composer David Behrman. Biography Early years Behrman's parents, Z ...

David Belasco David Belasco (July 25, 1853 – May 14, 1931) was an American theatrical producer, impresario, director, and playwright. He was the first writer to adapt the short story ''Madame Butterfly'' for the stage. He launched the theatrical career of m ...

Saul Bellow Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; 10 July 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only wr ...

Leo Birinski Leo Birinski (June 8, 1884 – October 23, 1951) was a playwright, screenwriter and director. He worked in Austria-Hungary, Germany and in the United States. As a playwright in Europe, he gained his biggest popularity from 1910 – 1917 bu ...

Mel Brooks Mel Brooks (born Melvin James Kaminsky; June 28, 1926) is an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. With a career spanning over seven decades, he is known as a writer and director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodies. He began h ...

Paddy Chayefsky Sidney Aaron "Paddy" Chayefsky (January 29, 1923 – August 1, 1981) was an American playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for writing both adapted and original screenplays. He was ...

JewishAmThea
* Betty Comden & Adolph Green *

Norman Corwin Norman Lewis Corwin (May 3, 1910 – October 18, 2011) was an American writer, screenwriter, producer, essayist and teacher of journalism and writing. His earliest and biggest successes were in the writing and directing of radio drama during the ...

Howard Dietz Howard Dietz (September 8, 1896 – July 30, 1983) was an American publicist, lyricist, and librettist, best remembered for his songwriting collaboration with Arthur Schwartz. Biography Dietz was born in New York City. He attended Columbia Colle ...

Edward Einhorn Edward Einhorn (born September 6, 1970) is an American playwright, theater director, and novelist, noted for the comic absurdism of his drama and the imaginative richness of his literary works. A native of Westfield, New Jersey, Einhorn graduated ...

Eve Ensler V, formerly Eve Ensler (; born May 25, 1953), is an American playwright, performer, feminist, and activist. V is best known for her play ''The Vagina Monologues''.

Harvey Fierstein Harvey Forbes Fierstein ( ; born June 6, 1952) is an American actor, playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for his theater work in ''Torch Song Trilogy'' and ''Hairspray'' and movie roles in ''Mrs. Doubtfire'', '' Independence Day'', and ...

Edna Ferber Edna Ferber (August 15, 1885 – April 16, 1968) was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels include the Pulitzer Prize-winning '' So Big'' (1924), ''Show Boat'' (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), '' Cim ...

Herb Gardner Herbert George Gardner (December 28, 1934 – September 25, 2003), was an American commercial artist, cartoonist, playwright and screenwriter. Early life Born in Brooklyn, New York, Gardner was the son of a bar owner. His late brother, Rober ...

Larry Gelbart Larry Simon Gelbart (February 25, 1928 – September 11, 2009) was an American television writer, playwright, screenwriter, director and author, most famous as a creator and producer of the television series ''M*A*S*H'', and as co-writer of the B ...

Joel Gersmann Joel Gersmann (August 26, 1942 – June 24, 2005) was an American playwright of experimental theatre. During his 35 years as artistic director at Broom Street Theater, Gersmann was fearless in the subject matter of his plays, with no regard to th ...

Josh Greenfeld Josh Greenfeld (27 February 1928 – 11 May 2018) was an American author and screenwriter mostly known for his screenplay for the 1974 film ''Harry and Tonto'' along with Paul Mazursky, which earned them an Academy Award nomination and its star, A ...

Oscar Hammerstein II Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II (; July 12, 1895 – August 23, 1960) was an American lyricist, librettist, theatrical producer, and (usually uncredited) director in the musical theater for almost 40 years. He won eight Ton ...

Otto Harbach Otto Abels Harbach, born Otto Abels Hauerbach (August 18, 1873 – January 24, 1963) was an American lyricist and librettist of nearly 50 musical comedies and operettas. Harbach collaborated as lyricist or librettist with many of the leading Broa ...

Yip Harburg Edgar Yipsel Harburg (born Isidore Hochberg; April 8, 1896 – March 5, 1981) was an American popular song lyricist and librettist who worked with many well-known composers. He wrote the lyrics to the standards "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" ( ...

Moss Hart Moss Hart (October 24, 1904 – December 20, 1961) was an American playwright, librettist, and theater director. Early years Hart was born in New York City, the son of Lillian (Solomon) and Barnett Hart, a cigar maker. He had a younger brother ...

(on Hart and George S. Kaufman) "Both were tall, dark and Jewish, and both had private demons..." *

Ben Hecht Ben Hecht (; February 28, 1894 – April 18, 1964) was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist, and novelist. A successful journalist in his youth, he went on to write 35 books and some of the most enjoyed screenplay ...

Lillian Hellman Lillian Florence Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American playwright, prose writer, memoirist and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway, as well as her communist sympathies and political activism. She was blacklisted aft ...

Peretz Hirshbein Peretz Hirshbein ( yi, פרץ הירשביין;7 November 1880, Melnik, Kleszczele, Grodno Governorate – 16 August 1948, Los Angeles) was a Yiddish-language playwright, novelist, journalist, travel writer, and theater director. Because ...

Israel Horovitz Israel Horovitz (March 31, 1939 – November 9, 2020) was an American playwright, director, actor and co-founder of the Gloucester Stage Company in 1979. He served as artistic director until 2006 and later served on the board, ex officio an ...

* George Jessel *

George S. Kaufman George Simon Kaufman (November 16, 1889June 2, 1961) was an American playwright, theater director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals for the Marx Brothers and others. ...

Sidney Kingsley Sidney Kingsley (22 October 1906 – 20 March 1995) was an American dramatist. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play '' Men in White'' in 1934. Life and career Kingsley was born Sidney Kirschner in New York. He studied at ...

Tony Kushner Anthony Robert Kushner (born July 16, 1956) is an American author, playwright, and screenwriter. Lauded for his work on stage he's most known for his seminal work ''Angels in America'' which earned a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. At the turn ...

James Lapine James Elliot Lapine (born January 10, 1949) is an American stage director, playwright, screenwriter, and librettist. He has won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical three times, for ''Into the Woods'', ''Falsettos'', and '' Passion''. He ha ...

Arthur Laurents Arthur Laurents (July 14, 1917 – May 5, 2011) was an American playwright, theatre director, film producer and screenwriter. After writing scripts for radio shows after college and then training films for the U.S. Army during World War II, ...

H. Leivick H. Leivick (Yiddish: ה. לײװיק; pen name of Leivick Halpern, December 25, 1888 – December 23, 1962) was a Yiddish language writer, known for his 1921 "dramatic poem in eight scenes" '' The Golem''. He also wrote many highly political, r ...

Alan Jay Lerner Alan Jay Lerner (August 31, 1918 – June 14, 1986) was an American lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, and later Burton Lane, he created some of the world's most popular and enduring works of musical theatre bot ...

Ira Levin Ira Marvin Levin (August 27, 1929 – November 12, 2007) was an American novelist, playwright, and songwriter. His works include the novels ''A Kiss Before Dying (novel), A Kiss Before Dying'' (1953), ''Rosemary's Baby (novel), Rosemary's Baby'' ...

Craig Lucas Craig Lucas (born April 30, 1951) is an American playwright, screenwriter, theatre director, musical actor, and film director. Biography Born on April 30, 1951, he was found abandoned in a car in Atlanta, Georgia. Lucas was adopted when he wa ...

David Mamet David Alan Mamet (; born November 30, 1947) is an American playwright, filmmaker, and author. He won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony Award, Tony nominations for his plays ''Glengarry Glen Ross'' (1984) and ''Speed-the-Plow'' (1988). He first ...

Donald Margulies Donald Margulies (born September 2, 1954) is an American playwright and academic. In 2000, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play ''Dinner with Friends''. Background and education Margulies attended John Dewey High School in Brookly ...

Arthur Miller Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are '' All My Sons'' (1947), ''Death of a Salesman'' ( ...

* Cheryl Moch * Becky Mode *

Itamar Moses Itamar Moses (born 1977) is an American playwright, author, and television writer. Biography Moses grew up in a American Jews, Jewish family in Berkeley, California, Berkeley, California, earned his bachelor's degree at Yale University, and his M ...

Clifford Odets Clifford Odets (July 18, 1906 – August 14, 1963) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. In the mid-1930s, he was widely seen as the potential successor to Nobel Prize-winning playwright Eugene O'Neill, as O'Neill began to withdra ...

Carl Reiner Carl Reiner (March 20, 1922 – June 29, 2020) was an American actor, stand-up comedian, director, screenwriter, and author whose career spanned seven decades. He was the recipient of many awards and honors, including 11 Primetime Emmy Awards, ...

Elmer Rice Elmer Rice (born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein, September 28, 1892 – May 8, 1967) was an American playwright. He is best known for his plays ''The Adding Machine'' (1923) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of New York tenement life, '' Street Sce ...

Morrie Ryskind Morris "Morrie" Ryskind (October 20, 1895 – August 24, 1985) was an American dramatist, lyricist and writer of theatrical productions and movies, who became a conservative political activist later in life. Life and career Ryskind was born in ...

Peter Sagal Peter Daniel Sagal (born January 31, 1965) is an American humorist, writer, and host of the National Public Radio game show '' Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!'' and the PBS special ''Constitution USA with Peter Sagal''. __TOC__ Early life, fami ...

Rod Serling Rodman Edward Serling (December 25, 1924 – June 28, 1975) was an American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, and narrator/on-screen host, best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his anthology television series ' ...

Irwin Shaw Irwin Shaw (February 27, 1913 – May 16, 1984) was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. He is best known for two of his novels: ''The Young Lions'' ( ...

Wallace Shawn Wallace Michael Shawn (born November 12, 1943) is an American actor, playwright, and essayist. His film roles include Wally Shawn (a fictionalized version of himself) in '' My Dinner with Andre'' (1981), Vizzini in ''The Princess Bride'' (1987), ...

Sidney Sheldon Sidney Sheldon (February 11, 1917 – January 30, 2007) was an American writer. He was prominent in the 1930s, first working on Broadway plays, and then in motion pictures, notably writing the successful comedy ''The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer ...

Martin Sherman Martin Gerald Sherman (born December 22, 1938) is an American dramatist and screenwriter best known for his 20 stage plays which have been produced in over 60 countries. He rose to fame in 1979 with the production of his play '' Bent'', which e ...

Neil Simon Marvin Neil Simon (July 4, 1927 – August 26, 2018) was an American playwright, screenwriter and author. He wrote more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly film adaptations of his plays. He has received mo ...

Isaac Bashevis Singer Isaac Bashevis Singer ( yi, יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער; November 11, 1903 – July 24, 1991) was a Polish-born American Jewish writer who wrote and published first in Yiddish and later translated himself into English with the help ...

Joey Soloway Joey Soloway (previously Jill Soloway; born September 26, 1965) is an American television creator, showrunner, director and writer. Soloway is known for creating, writing, executive producing and directing the Amazon original series ''Transparent' ...

, playwright, television writer *

Aaron Sorkin Aaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an American playwright, screenwriter and film director. Born in New York City, he developed a passion for writing at an early age. Sorkin has earned an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, five Primetime E ...

(born 1961), screenwriter, producer and playwright *

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...

Joseph Stein Joseph Stein (May 30, 1912 – October 24, 2010) was an American playwright best known for writing the books for such musicals as ''Fiddler on the Roof'' and '' Zorba''. Biography Born in New York City to Jewish parents, Charles and Emma ...

* Louise Stern *

Jeffrey Sweet Jeffrey Sweet (born May 3, 1950) is an American writer, journalist, songwriter and theatre historian. Personal life Sweet's father was James Sweet, a science writer for the University of Chicago who aided Supreme Court chief justice Earl Warre ...

Alfred Uhry Alfred Fox Uhry (born December 3, 1936) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has received an Academy Award, two Tony Awards and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for dramatic writing for ''Driving Miss Daisy''. He is a member of the Fellowship of ...

Wendy Wasserstein Wendy Wasserstein (October 18, 1950 – January 30, 2006) was an American playwright. She was an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. She received the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1989 fo ...

(1950–2006), playwright and an

Andrew Dickson White Andrew Dickson White (November 7, 1832 – November 4, 1918) was an American historian and educator who cofounded Cornell University and served as its first president for nearly two decades. He was known for expanding the scope of college curricu ...

Professor-at-Large at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

; recipient of the

Tony Award The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Award, recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual cer ...

for Best Play and the

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

for Drama *

Jerome Weidman Jerome Weidman (April 4, 1913, New York City – October 6, 1998, New York City) was an American playwright and novelist. He collaborated with George Abbott on the book for the musical ''Fiorello!'' with music by Jerry Bock, and lyrics by Sheldo ...

Franz Werfel Franz Viktor Werfel (; 10 September 1890 – 26 August 1945) was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and Poetry, poet whose career spanned World War I, the Interwar period, and World War II. He is primarily known as the author of ''Th ...

Norman Wexler Norman Wexler (August 16, 1926 – August 23, 1999) was an American screenwriter whose work included films such as ''Saturday Night Fever'', ''Serpico'' and '' Joe''. A New Bedford, Massachusetts native and 1944 Central High School gradua ...

, screenwriter of ''Saturday Night Fever'', ''Joe'', ''Serpico'', ''Mandingo'' * Rory Winston, playwright, poet, comedy writer, reviewer

References

{{Reflist

Playwrights A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

Jewish

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

See also

References