Joe Pintauro, Biography
Pintauro’s early poems were published by Harper & Row, also in collaboration with artists, Corita Kent and Norman LaLiberte. His three one acts about Italian American life in NYC, entitled Cacciatore, garnered his first major theatre reviews. Snow Orchid, his first full length. became a selection of the Eugene O’Neill Conference and was later produced with Olympia Dukakis, Peter Boyle and Robert Lupone at Circle Rep. A revival in London, starred Jude Law and Paola di Ognisotti. His love of the short play led to many productions such as American Divine, in Chicago and Moving Targets produced by New York City’s Vineyard Theatre. Full length plays are: Beside Herself, Circle Rep, with William Hurt, Lois Smith, Calista Flockhart and Melissa Joan Hart. Raft Of The Medusa at the Minetta Lane and London’s Gate Nottinghill (under the title, Salvation). Men’s Lives, a dramatic adaptation of Mattheissen’s non fiction book, was the innaugural production of the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor. The Dead Boy, about faith and trauma in today’s Catholic priesthood, was work-shopped at London’s Royal Court under Stephen Daldry and again there with Ian McKellan. Pintauro directed The Dead Boy in Dutch language in the Netherlands under the title Dode Jongen, with Anton Lutz. The play in it’s final form was performed in 2004, with Roy Scheider and Mercedes Ruehl. His collection of some forty short plays called, Metropolitan Operas (Dramatists Play Service, NYC, have been produced in various languages world wide including the Comedia del Arte in Venetia under Carla Poli. The trilogy By the Sea, By the Sea, By the Beautiful Sea, a collaboration with Terrence McNally and Lanford Wilson, was produced by The Bay Street Theatre Festival and later at The Manhattan Theatre Club. Heaven and Earth, a play about American Farm life, also a Bay Street production, was directed by Jack Hofsiss. Pintauro has recently completed Beautiful Dreamer, a Civil War screenplay about the only woman to ever receive the Congressional medal of Honor.
Joe studied poetry with Leonie Adams at Columbia and privately with Dorothy Van Ghent. He taught fiction writing at Sarah Lawrence and N.Y.U’s Tisch, film making at Marymount College and The School of Visual Arts, N.Y. He taught playwriting at Southampton College. Pintauro will be playwright for the 2003 Southampton Writers Conference. The Dead Boy was a selection of the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference. His novel State Of Grace was published by Times Books. His novel, Cold Hands, Simon and Schuster, was widely reviewed and singled out by the New York Times as one of the best novels of the year. Pintauro has studied cinematography under George Stoney, has a B.B.A. from Manhattan College, a B.A. in Philosophy from St. Jerome’s College, Kitchener, Ontario and completed four full time years of Major Theology at Niagara University. He was recently awarded the Margaret Hill inaugural chair in theatre at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame.