IT HAPPENED HERE
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IT’S HAPPENING HERE
Watch Richard Dresser go inside the recesses of Dear Leader’s decaying mind...
March 31, 2025
March 24, 2025
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“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
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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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Video
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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.
Benched
Official Trailer
Plays
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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.”