Joshua Ravetch

Joshua Ravetch is an American playwright, screenwriter and stage director born in Los Angeles, California, who co-created and directed Carrie Fisher's one-woman show Wishful Drinking, which had a successful run on Broadway. He also co-wrote and directed Dick Van Dyke in his first-ever one man show, Step in Time! A Musical Memoir, which premiered at The Geffen Playhouse.

Career

Ravetch's award-winning play, Chasing Mem'ries: A Different Kind of Musical received the Edgerton New Play Award and was nominated for the Ovation. The play starred Tyne Daly and Robert Forster and world premiered at The Geffen Playhouse in 2017. Ravetch collaborated with lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman with music by Marvin Hamlisch, Michel Legrand and Johnny Mandel.

Ravetch's play One November Yankee began its life at the NoHo Arts Theatre in a workshop production starring Academy nominated, Robert Forster and M*A*S*H's own Hot Lips Houlihan, Loretta Swit . The play moved Off-Broadway to 59E59 just as Covid hit starring Harry Hamlin an Stefanie Powers winning the ten play competition at The Delaware Theater Company before moving Off-Broadway to 59E59. The play was unusual in that the set was an actual full-sized crashed Piper J3 Cub. It becomes a character in the play as one review called the play,"Magnificent theatrical origami." First the plane is an art installation at MOMA based on a real plane that disappeared into the mountains of New Hampshire. Hamlin is the artist, his sister, Powers is doing him a favor, she curates. Then the museum panels become trees, and smoke billows from the engine and we see the actual plane just after the crash. We find out what happened to this brother / sister flying to their father's funeral. Finally, we see the plane five years later when another brother / sister are hiking deep into the woods and stumble on the wreckage and do archaeology. All setoff siblings are played by Hamlin and Powers.

Ravetch also wrote and directed The Astronomer, which was performed at The Pasadena Playhouse with Academy Award winner Shirley Jones in the title role (after receiving a workshop production at the NoHo Arts Center Theatre). The play came on the heels of the whimsical project Ravetch co-wrote with stage and screen icon Dick Van Dyke, Step in Time! A Musical Memoir. Ravetch directed the world premiere production of the play at The Geffen Playhouse with Van Dyke starring.

Perhaps Ravetch is most known for collaborated with actress/writer Carrie Fisher, and co-creating and directing her in Wishful Drinking, Fisher's one-woman-show at Los Angeles' Geffen Playhouse. It enjoyed an extended run on Broadway at Studio 54 and was adapted into a special for HBO.

Also at The Geffen Playhouse, Ravetch wrote and directed a workshop production of Writer's Cramp with Oscar nominee Robert Forster, Emmy winner and Tony nominee Holland Taylor, and Tony nominee Douglas Sills. Other writing credits include Periscope Up a play in one act which was performed at the NoHo Arts Theatre and was directed by Star Trek veteran Jonathan Frakes.

In 2023 Ravetch's play, Our American Sons was workshopped at the Delaware Theatre Company. A project conceived over Covid tracking the true-life stories of gay and trans kids who have been put through the utterly damaging and traumatic atrocity known as Conversion Therapy, a practice slowly being outlawed throughout the USA.

Ravetch has been developing Beverly Johnson; IN VOGUE which workshopped in Palm Springs in 2023 and opened Off-Broadway in January, 2024. That date coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the famous ground-breaking Vogue cover where Johnson became the first every black woman to grace the cover of American Vogue.

Ravetch also directed Clifford Odets' The Big Knife; Thomas Babe's Prayer For My Daughter; John Patrick's Hasty Heart and Ira Levin's Deathtrap which garnered five Drama-Logue Awards including awards for Director and Production.

Ravetch's other playwriting credits include Girders at Los Angeles' Coast Playhouse starring Robert Forster, which won the coveted Odets Award. Forster also starred in workshop productions of Ravetch's plays Off Sides with Olympia Dukakis and Beacon with Brooke Shields.

His other plays include Invention with Stefanie Powers at the NoHo Arts Center, and he co-wrote One From the Hart, Powers' one-woman show which opened at the Orange County Performing Arts Centre. Also at The Coast Playhouse, Ravetch directed Bart Baker's play, Love Acts, with actress/supermodel Beverly Johnson. Johnson was nominated for the NAACP Image award for her performance.

Ravetch's television credits include CBS' Joan of Arcadia, Titan for TNT, Horseshoe Bay for Warner Brothers, and Yesterday for Laura Ziskin Productions.

Stage

Year	Title	Position	Notes
2024	Beverly Johnson: "IN VOGUE"	Writer/Director	59E59, Off Broadway
2023	Our American Sons	Writer/Director	Delaware Theatre Company
2021	Chasing More Mem'ries; Another Kind of Musical. (Second in the Chasing Mem'ries cycle.)	Writer/Director	Lyricists, Alan & Marilyn Bergman collaborating.
2020	One November Yankee	Writer/Director	59e59th Street Theatre, Off Broadway, New York, NY
2019	One November Yankee	Writer/Director	Delaware Theatre Company starring Harry Hamlin and Stefanie Powers: Preproduction
2019	Beverly Johnson: Naked!	Writer/Director	West Hollywood Library Theatre: Workshop production starring supermodel, Beverly Johnson
2017	Chasing Mem'ries: A Different Kind of Musical	Writer/Director	The Geffen Playhouse starring Tyne Daly and Robert Forster. Recipient of the Edgerton New Play Award.
2016	Wishful Drinking Strikes Back	Co-Creator/Director	The Geffen Playhouse Commission to star Carrie Fisher (Never performed)
2016	Go Figure: The Randy Gardner Story	Writer/Director	Starring Olympic Champions Randy Gardner with Dorothy Hamill and Tai Babilonia at the NoHo Arts Center in Los Angeles and the Delaware Theatre Company in Wilmington, Delaware (2018).
2015	Onward: The Diana Nyad Story	Co-Writer/Director	Starring Diana Nyad.
2014	One November Yankee	Writer/Director	Starring Loretta Swit and Harry Hamlin.
2013	The Light Bulb	Writer	NoHo Arts Center
2012	Periscope Up	Writer	Directed by Jonathan Frakes.
2011	Step in Time: A Musical Memoir	Writer/Director	The Geffen Playhouse starring Dick Van Dyke.
2010	The Astronomer	Writer/Director	Pasadena Playhouse starring Shirley Jones.
2009	Writer's Cramp	Writer/Director	The Geffen Playhouse: Workshop Production starring Holland Taylor, Robert Forster, Douglas Sills
2008	Beacon	Writer/ Director	Egyptian Arena Theatre: Workshop Production starring Holland Taylor, Brooke Shields, Robert Forster, Kerr Smith.
2007	Off Sides	Writer/Director	Egyptian Arena Theatre: Workshop Production starring Olympia Dukakis and Robert Forster.
2006	Wishful Drinking	Co-Creator /Director	The Geffen Playhouse starring Carrie Fisher
2006	One From the Hart	Director	Orange County Performing Arts Center starring Stefanie Powers
2002	The Seagull	Director	Egyptian Arena Theatre
2000	Deathtrap	Director	Stella Adler Theatre
1998	The Hasty Heart	Director	Glendale Centre Theatre
1996	Girders	Writer/Director	The Coast Playhouse
1995	The Big Knife	Director	Stella Adler Theatre starring Robert Forster
1994	Prayer for my Daughter	Director	The Complex
1993	Love Acts	Director	The Coast Playhouse