Bios:

Tim Blake Nelson (playwright) is a celebrated writer, director, actor, and producer.

His work as a playwright was most recently on display with The Public’s acclaimed 2019 Off-Broadway world premiere production of his play, Socrates, an intimate portrait of the ancient Greek philosopher, starring Michael Stuhlbarg in the title role, and directed by Tony Award-winner Doug Hughes. He made his NYC playwriting debut in 1996 with the MCC Theater Obie Award-winning production of his play, The Grey Zone, a searing Holocaust drama that won Nelson Newsday’s Oppenheimer Award for Best Debut Play, along with Encore Magazine’s Taking Off Award and the Berilla Kerr Award. He then adapted the play into a 2001 feature film of the same name, starring David Arquette, Steve Buscemi, Mira Sorvino, and Harvey Keitel. The film won the National Board of Review’s Freedom of Expression Award. MCC Theater also premiered his 1998 play Anadarko, set in a small-town Oklahoma jail, where the intertwined destinies of two men collide as each awaits judgment in adjacent jail cells. His debut play, Eye of God, set in his native Oklahoma, first premiered at the Seattle Repertory Theatre in 1992 where it was nominated for the Kesselring Prize. It most recently played Off-Broadway in 2009. This harrowing drama about a naive young woman’s fateful marriage to the disturbed ex-convict was also adapted into a feature film written and directed by Nelson, nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Feature at Sundance and the Someone to Watch Independent Spirit Award, while winning the Tokyo Bronze Prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival, along with Best Director at the Seattle Film Festival. As a stage actor, Nelson has starred Off-Broadway in Shakespeare in the Park’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Beard of Avon, Oedipus, Richard III, Troilus and Cressida, Mad Forest, Twelfth Night, and at MTC, Playwrights Horizons, MCC, NYTW, and Soho Rep.

A veteran screen actor, Nelson has nearly 100 screen credits, including O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Thin Red Line, Minority Report, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Lincoln, Nightmare Alley, Old Henry, Syriana, Fantastic Four, Holes, Donnie Brasco, Just Mercy, The Incredible Hulk, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Meet the Fockers, Captain America: Brave New World, and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. For television, he starred in HBO’s Watchmen, earning a Critics’ Choice Award nomination; and most recently appeared on Peacock’s Emmy-nominated Poker Face and Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities. As a filmmaker, he has written and directed five features, including Leaves of Grass starring Edward Norton, Keri Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, and Susan Sarandon; Anesthesia starring Sam Waterston, Kristen Stewart, Glenn Close, Gretchen Mol, and Corey Stoll; and O, a modern adaptation of Othello starring Mekhi Phifer, Josh Hartnett, and Julia Stiles.

This fall, Nelson will co-star in FX’s new drama series The Lowdown starring Ethan Hawke and created by Sterlin Harjo; in Mona Fastvold’s highly anticipated musical drama feature film, The Testament of Ann Lee, starring Amanda Seyfried about the famed real-life religious leader, which will premiere at Venice; and will star in the title role of the independent feature, Bang Bang, playing an aging boxer whose glory days are long past, in theaters on September 12. He is currently editing his latest film as a writer/director, The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd, starring Amanda Seyfried, Scoot McNairy, Wunmi Mosaku, Missi Pyle, and Nelson himself. He published his debut novel, City of Blows, in 2023 with Unnamed Press, and will debut his second novel, Superhero, in December 2025.

Mark Wing-Davey (director) lives in NYC and is an Arts Professor in Grad Acting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where from 2008-2020 he was chair. He first came to prominence in the U.S. for his production of Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest at New York Theatre Workshop (with Tim Blake Nelson in the original cast), initiating his U.S. directing career and earning him an Obie Award for Outstanding Director. Working extensively in New York for NYTW, MTC, Lincoln Center, Playwrights Horizons, LAByrinth, and most often, The Public, where Troilus & Cressida and Henry 5 (at the Delacorte), School of the Americas, Silence Cunning Exile, 36 Views, Unconditional, The Singing Forest, The Skriker and The Vagrant Trilogy are highlights. Recent work also includes Nina Raine’s Consent, Mike Bartlett’s King Charles the Third and Francis Turnly’s The Great Wave, Peter Barnes’ Red Noses, and a non-male identifying All’s Well That Ends Well. He has directed numerous productions of new and classic plays at major theatres across the US, UK, and Australia.