Buy the Book and Listen to the Podcast

“Oh God. It rings true.”

— Roy Blount Jr


“Richard Dresser’s It Happened Here is the witty, resonant story we need right now.”

 — Betsy West


“This book is as astonishing as it is extraordinary”

— Lewis Black


“a heartbreaking, hilarious tale of a dysfunctional family as screwed up as yours.”

— Jay Tarses


See All Advance Praise for It Happened Here

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Richard Dresser

Richard Dresser is an award-winning playwright whose seventeen published plays have been produced on Broadway, off-Broadway, in leading regional theaters, and all over Europe. His first novel, IT HAPPENED HERE, the saga of an American family between the years 2024 and 2039, deals with life under a totalitarian regime when you still have Netflix and two-day free shipping. It was made into a podcast starring John Turturro, Edie Falco, and Tony Shalhoub. He teaches screenwriting at Columbia University graduate Film School and is President and a founding member of the Writers Guild Initiative, which does writing workshops all over the country, with a mission of giving a voice to populations not being heard.

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Interview with cast members of the It Happened Here Podcast on Morning Joe

Interview with John Turturro and Tony Shalhoub on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.


Halftime

From PUBLIC SPEAKING, a trilogy of short films

A stressed out basketball couch tries to inspire his losing team with a HALFTIME talk that includes just a little too much information.

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Benched

Official Trailer



 

Kevin Kelly of the Boston Globe called Dresser “a ferocious playwright…who writes with a headlong intensity and a sense of pervasive mystery.”

The LA Times said, “Dresser’s dialogue crackles like gunfire in a shooting gallery.”

John Simon in New York Magazine said,Below the Belt is a terribly serious play that keeps you steadily laughing; properly understood, it should also make you weep.”