Robert Schenkkan

Robert Frederic Schenkkan Jr., born on March 19, 1953, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. The son of Jean Gregory Schenkkan and Robert Frederic Schenkkan, a professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin and a public television executive, Schenkkan grew up in Austin, Texas. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Drama, magna cum laude, from the University of Texas at Austin in 1975 as a Plan II Honors student, graduating as a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Friars' Society. He subsequently received an M.F.A. in Theatre Arts from Cornell University in 1977. The University of Texas later recognized him with both the E. William Doty College of Fine Arts Distinguished Alumnus Award and the UT Texas Exes Distinguished Young Alumnus Award. Of Dutch-Jewish descent on his father's side and Scottish and English descent on his mother's side, Schenkkan spent many years living and working in New York City and Los Angeles before shifting his focus exclusively to writing in 1990, after which he has divided his time between New York City and Seattle.

Schenkkan is the author of ten full-length plays. His early work includes Handler, which deals with a snake-handling church and premiered at Actors Express Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, and Heaven on Earth, which won the Julie Harris/Beverly Hills Theatre Guild Award, participated in the Eugene O'Neill Playwright's Conference, and premiered Off-Broadway at the WPA Theatre. Final Passages premiered at the Studio Arena Theatre, and Tachinoki, which premiered at the Ensemble Studio Theatre in Los Angeles, was named a Critic's Choice by the LA Weekly. His one-act play The Survivalist premiered at the Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival, subsequently traveled to the EST Marathon in New York City, Canada's DuMaurier Festival, and the Edinburgh Festival, where it won the Best of the Fringe award. His collected one-act plays are published by Dramatists Play Service under the title Conversations with the Spanish Lady. He has also written plays for young audiences, including The Dream Thief, which premiered at Milwaukee's First Stage, and The Devil and Daniel Webster, which premiered at the Seattle Children's Theatre in February 2006. Additional works include By the Waters of Babylon, which premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in February 2005; Lewis and Clark Reach the Euphrates, which premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in December 2005; and The Marriage of Miss Hollywood and King Neptune, which premiered at the University of Texas at Austin in November 2005.

His most celebrated stage work, The Kentucky Cycle, is a two-part epic that underwent years of development at New Dramatists and the Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York City before being workshopped at the Mark Taper Forum, EST-LA, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Sundance Institute. The play received the largest grant ever awarded by the Fund for New American Plays and had its world premiere in 1991 at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle, where it set box office records. In 1992, it served as the centerpiece of the Mark Taper Forum's 25th Anniversary Season. That same year, The Kentucky Cycle was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, making it the first play in the history of the award to receive the honor without having first been presented in New York City. The play also won both the PEN Centre West Award and the L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. In 1993, it appeared at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., before opening on Broadway in November of that year, where it received nominations for the Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle awards.

Schenkkan's Broadway play All the Way dramatizes the behind-the-scenes political maneuvering of President Lyndon Baines Johnson in his effort to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The play premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival on July 28, 2012, and won both the 2012 ATCA/Steinberg Award for Best Play and the inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by History. It opened at the American Repertory Theater in Boston on September 19, 2013, starring Bryan Cranston, and sold out its entire run. The Broadway premiere followed on March 6, 2014, at the Neil Simon Theatre. All the Way was awarded the 2014 Tony Award for Best Play as well as the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, with Cranston also receiving a Tony Award for his portrayal of Johnson. A sequel, The Great Society, premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in July 2014 and subsequently opened on Broadway in September 2019. Schenkkan also wrote Building the Wall in the period leading up to the 2016 presidential election.

Schenkkan's screen work spans both film and television. His film credits include The Quiet American, directed by Phillip Noyce and starring Michael Caine, who received an Academy Award nomination for his performance, and the 2016 war drama Hacksaw Ridge, directed by Mel Gibson, which Schenkkan co-wrote. For HBO, he wrote four episodes of The Pacific in 2010, earning two Emmy Award nominations and a WGA Award for Best Miniseries Writing. His television adaptation of All the Way premiered on HBO in May 2016, with Cranston reprising his role as Lyndon Baines Johnson. Additional television credits include The Andromeda Strain for A&E in 2009, Spartacus for the USA Network in 2006, and Crazy Horse for TNT. In 2005, Sony Pictures hired Schenkkan to develop a script based on Marvel Comics' Killraven, and he was also named as the writer for an adaptation of the comic book Incognito, published by the Marvel imprint Icon Comics. In total, Schenkkan has received three Emmy nominations and one WGA Award for his television work.

As an actor, Schenkkan appeared in the 1989 film Out Cold and starred in the 1990 film Pump Up the Volume, playing high school guidance counselor David Deaver. He is also recognized for his role as Lieutenant Commander Dexter Remmick in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes Coming of Age and Conspiracy. Schenkkan is a New Dramatists alumnus and a member of both the Ensemble Studio Theatre and the National Theatre Conference. He served as the 2012 Thornton Wilder Fellow at the MacDowell Colony and is a member of the College of Fellows of the American Theater. He has received grants from New York State, the California Arts Council, and the Vogelstein and Arthur foundations. Schenkkan is an uncle of actor Ben McKenzie.