Charles Deemer

a short biography


2013 update. My most recent bio material is at www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer/bio.htm. A video interview with me also is there. My complete literary archive is at www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer, the Ibiblio library at the University of North Carolina.
Many "bios" are written in the third person. I'll write mine in the first.

I'm a playwright, screenwriter, fiction writer, essayist, editor and teacher. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill hosts my literary archive in their Ibiblio Collection, which is available online at http://www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer.

I earned my MFA in Playwriting from the University of Oregon. Over three dozen of my stage plays have been produced, including six "hyperdramas," an innovative new form of environmental theater generated by scripts written in hypertext, a form in which I am a pioneer. My most ambitious "hyperdrama" is an expanded retelling of Chekhov's The Seagull, which is available online at http://www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer/chekindx.htm.

I've had plays and short films produced. I've published novels, plays, screenplays, essays, a memoir, a book of poems. Hard copies of my published work are archived at the University of Oregon. You can find much of my published work at Amazon.

Perhaps I'm best known in the U.S. for my comedy Christmas at the Juniper Tavern (Arrowood Books, 1985), the public television version of which won an ACE award. Internationally, however, I am best know for my work in hyperdrama, a new dramatic form in which scripts written in hypertext generate plays with simultaneous scenes that are performed in "real spaces." This form of drama has been called "a living movie" because the audience watches from within "a location," right next to the action (as a camera crew would watch a scene), not from afar in a dark theater. If you are curious about hyperdrama, see the section on it in my literary archives at http://www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer, where you can access many of my own screenplays as well (in the screenwriting section).

I began screenwriting after selling the film rights to my stage play Waitresses, which became the screenplay Ruby's Tune (optioned by Raindrop Productions). I've had five other scripts optioned as well but none has yet seen production. Nor did either of the three projects on which I was hired as writer ever get to the screen.

Again, the situation is not that unusual. Many more producers (particularly independents) are wheeling and dealing, trying to get a project funded, than actually see their name on the screen.

I am on the graduate writing faculty at Portland State University, where I teach screenwriting. I was among the first to teach screenwriting on the Internet, first via Writers on the Net (www.writers.com) and later for Eastern Oregon University. From 1994-2001 I was the webmaster of "The Screenwriters & Playwrights Home Page", the original World Wide Web resource for scriptwriters.

I contributed regularly to Creative Screenwriting magazine and kept a monthly screenwriting column at the Cyber Film School (www.cyberfilmschool.com). I am the former editor of Sweet Reason, a journal of ideas, and the former book editor of Oregon Humanities magazine. I also write fiction, and three of my short stories have received the Roll of Honor award in the annual Best American Short Stories anthology.

I began making digital films in 2007. See them at www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer/Video.htm

I've lived in Portland, Oregon, since 1978.

[WRITING RESUME]
[THE 12 MODULES]


SCREENWRIGHT: the craft of screenwriting

11/98