Marc Lapadula was born in 1960. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Penn in 1983, an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in 1984, and an MFA in theater arts and dramaturgy from the University of Iowa Playwrights’ Workshop in 1987. He was a visiting lecturer at Penn between 1992 and 2009, and from 1991 to 2013, he created and ran Johns Hopkins’ screenwriting program. He taught screenwriting seminars in Yale University’s film studies program from 1992 until his death. Mr. Lapadula was a prolific playwright and screenwriter. His work includes award-winning stage plays, screenplays, and film productions. His plays, including StripHer, Not by Name, and Two Shakes, have been produced in New York off-Broadway, England, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Iowa. He had several screenplays commissioned or optioned, including Distant Influence and At Risk, and screen adaptations of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog and Miguel de Unamuno’s Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr. He produced Angel Passing, starring Hume Cronyn and Teresa Wright, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the grand prize at WorldFest Houston. He also co-produced Mentor, which premiered at The Tribeca Film Festival. His former students wrote, directed, or produced dozens of critically acclaimed films including La La Land, (500) Days of Summer, The Disaster Artist, and The End of the Tour, and have scripted for television shows including Family Guy, Scrubs, Law and Order: SVU, and Queen Sugar. In 2009, Mr. Lapadula received a Distinguished Faculty Award from the University of Pennsylvania. He received the 2009 Outstanding Teaching Award from the Hopkins Masters in Creative Writing and the Heritage Commission of Delaware County Award for Outstanding Contributions to Historic Architectural Preservation in 2011.
