John Susman

Who is John Susman?

John Susman is an American playwright, Theatre director, screenwriter, and film director He received the Uprising Playwright's Award for his play Tiger Treadwell Takes Tinseltown, produced by the Los Angeles Theatre Unit. As a director, he has staged many plays including Harold Pinter’s The Lover at the Court Studio Theatre at the University of Chicago.

In the 1980s, he worked at Steppenwolf Theatre as their first literary manager in addition to dramaturg and assistant director on many Steppenwolf productions. At Chicago’s Northlight Theatre he ran the FDG/CBS New Plays Program to develop new plays funded by CBS and administered by the Foundation of the Dramatists Guild. Fluent in Spanish, he translated into English Bajarse al Moro by José Luis Alonso de Santos.

In 1990, his play Tiger Treadwell Takes Tinseltown was produced at the Ventura Court Theatre by the L.A. Theater Unit in Los Angeles.

In 2000, he wrote the play Nelson and Simon that was produced at Chicago’s Live Bait Theater directed by Richard Cotovsky starring Gary Houston and Rebecca Covey. The play dramatizes the love affair between Chicago literary giant Nelson Algren and French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir.