Wayne Lemon - Career

Career

Lemon began his career as a theater and music critic for the Austin Chronicle. He holds an MA in Film Production/Screenwriting from the University of Texas at Austin with a minor concentration in Shakespeare.

Lemon has developed motion picture screenplays for various major studios. He has written for such critically acclaimed shows as Grace Under Fire and The Famous Teddy Z as well as cult favorites The Torkelsons, Invasion America and Movie Stars. He is a cultural commentator for the website The Simon.

His darkly comic debut stage work, Jesus Hates Me, received its world premiere by the Denver Center Theater Company as part of the inaugural Colorado New Play Summit - Winter, 2006. Lemon served as playwright in residence at DCTC during the play's production. The production sparked hundreds of letters of protest from conservative Christian groups across the country. The Catholic Church labeled it "blasphemous" though none of their representatives had actually seen it.

The Texas premiere was produced by Kitchen Dog Theater of Dallas in Fall, 2006. The Dallas Morning News began questioning the appropriateness of the title five months in advance of the premiere. However, after the KDT opening, the Dallas Morning News' review stated, "...exceptionally well acted, impressively physical and ultimately about something more than finding the laugh lines and chuckling at the hicks." The Dallas set was created by local set designer, Erin Bailey.

Variety called the play "irreverent and at times as profane as rap, yet filled with pertinent issues and rebellious politics." Colorado Backstage said "The result is an exquisite comedy, featuring dark black lines of intriguing thought, with some of the funniest lines ever to appear on stage."

The play was a selected reading at the Steppenwolf Theater Company, at Horizon Theatre's 2006 New South PlayWorks Festival, the Hartford Stage's 2005 Brand:NEW Festival of Plays and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's 2005 Southern Writer's Project. It was also chosen to be a part of the American National Theater's premiere fundraiser, chaired by Paul Newman in New York, May 2005. A Fall, 2007 production of the play was produced by Emigrant Theater of Minneapolis.

In 2009 the West Coast Premiere of "Jesus Hates Me" was produced by the Chance Theater of Anaheim, directed by Oanh Nuygen. The Los Angeles Times said of this production "Lemon's dramedy about the search for meaning may offend as often as it convulses but it is certainly vivid. Lemon's narrative is both wildly inappropriate and keenly idiomatic." The Orange County Register said "Lemon is a keen observer of human flaws and frailties. Lemon skillfully merges dozens of minute details to form a seriocomic mosaic."

South Coast Repertory Theater of Costa Mesa, CA hosted the Chance Theater's production, Winter 2010, the first time since the early days of the theater that a smaller theater company has been invited to perform at SCR. The pilot program was a success, the production playing to sold out audiences and helped launch Studio SCR spotlighting the cutting edge works of America's most controversial playwrights.

The play was recently chosen to be included in publisher Smith & Kraus' New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2009, available from Amazon and Samuel French Booksellers.

His most recent play is titled 8 feet of water and is the true story of two young African American men who drown while in police custody. The New Haarlem Arts Theater selected the play to be a part of their summer 2012, reading series, Unheard Voices in American Theater, directed by Rob Barron. Lemon continues to write for the motion picture industry in Los Angeles.