BIO
Introduction
The story of Prince Gomolvilas is a story of forbidden love. It is a story about a love so shocking that statues have crumbled and grown men have crapped their pants. It is, alas, a story about how much Prince Gomolvilas is in love with...himself.
Theatre
Prince is best known as the world's only Thai-American playwright. (He challenges you to find another!) His plays include BIG HUNK O BURNIN' LOVE [1998], SEAT BELTS AND BIG FAT BUDDHAS [1999], THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING [2000], DEBUNKING LOVE [2000], BEE [2001], BOYZ OF ALL NATIONZ: THE RISE AND FALL OF A MULTI-ETHNIC BOY BAND [2002], the stage adapatation of the Scott Heim novel, MYSTERIOUS SKIN [2003], and THE FABULOUS ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN QUEER [2006].
These plays have been produced in such cities as Arlington (VA), Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Santa Ana, Seattle, and Washington (DC), by such companies as Asian Stories in America Theatre, dueEast Theatre Company, East West Players, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, New Conservatory Theatre Center, Pork Filled Players, Rude Guerrilla Theater Company, and SIS Productions. His work has also been performed in the U.K. and Singapore.
His one-act play, DONUT HOLES IN ORBIT, was produced at Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Smithsonian Institution. (Yes, that's right, that Smithsonian!)
His work has also been developed at the American Conservatory Theater, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Bear Arts Foundation's ColorFest, Chalk Repertory Theatre, Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company, Ford Amphitheatre, Lark Play Development Center, Ma-Yi Theatre Company, Mark Taper Forum, and South Coast Repertory.
For some reason, colleges and high schools like to mount his work too: Lafayette Senior High School (Wildwood, MO), Las Positas College (Livermore, CA), Lee-Davis High School (Mechanicsville, VA), Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (Liverpool, UK), Pomona College (Claremont, CA), San Francisco State University, University of California-Santa Cruz, and Westridge School (Pasadena, CA).
Jukebox Stories and Storytelling
Jukebox Stories is a critically acclaimed storytelling, song-singing, bingo-playing duo that features Prince Gomolvilas and singer/songwriter Brandon Patton. In addition to their two highly praised full-length shows that ran for six weeks each at Impact Theatre in Berkeley in 2006 (JUKEBOX STORIES) and 2008 (JUKEBOX STORIES: THE CASE OF THE CREAMY FOAM), they have also toured to theaters, colleges, coffeehouses, bars, and bowling alleys in Boston, Los Angeles, Middletown (CT), Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Smithfield (RI), and Washington, DC.
Prince has also presented his stories at such venues as Space 180 at the APAture arts festival (San Francisco), Barnes & Noble (Los Angeles), A Different Light Bookstore (West Hollywood), Intersection for the Arts (San Francisco), [INSIDE] the Ford Amphitheatre (Los Angeles), Occidental College (Los Angeles), University of Southern California (Los Angeles), and Westridge School (Pasadena, CA).
Film
Out of 2,593 applicants, Prince was selected for a screenwriting fellowship with The Chesterfield Writer's Film Project, a program sponsored by Paramount Pictures. He has optioned three screenplays, worked on several projects as a writer-for-hire, and is currently in pre-production for LATITUDE 90 NORTH, a short musical film that he is writing and directing.
Plays for Schools
Developed at TheatreWorks in the San Francisco Bay Area, OSKAR: THE KID THAT COULD (which promotes literacy and encourages students to embrace poetry and theatre) and OSKAR AND THE BIG BULLY BATTLE (which confronts the issue of school bullying) have regularly been touring to elementary schools throughout the Bay Area since 2006. The latter piece was developed in association with the Palo Alto Unified School District, which has commissioned Prince to write a third OSKAR play on self-worth and resiliency.
Prince wrote a trilogy of 40-character plays—URBAN AFFAIRS, EVERYTHING AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN, and WINNERS AND LOSERS—that were performed by eighth-grade students at the San Francisco Day School.
To supplement the California Student Safety and Violence Prevention Act of 2000 (which aims to protect students, faculty, and staff at public schools from harassment and discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation), the New Conservatory Theatre Center's YouthAware Educational Theatre in San Francisco commissioned Prince to research, develop, and write OUTSPOKEN, which explores the many reasons teenagers feel ostracized and which has been touring to middle schools and high schools throughout Northern and Central California since 2005.
A SIMPLE PITHY GUIDE..., which was commissioned by the University of California-Davis, is an educational theatre piece about diversity and gender equity that has become a regular part of the university's Teaching Resources Center training program.
Awards, Grants, and Commissions
Prince is the recipient of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Drama, Julie Harris/Janet and Maxwell Salter Playwright Award, International Herald Tribune/SRT Playwriting Award, and East West Players' Made in America Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement for the Asian Pacific Islander Community—EWP is the leading Asian-American theatre, as well as the longest-running theatre of color, in the United States.
He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group's Residency Program for Playwrights and the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation's New Play Production Program.
He has also received new-play commissions from Asian Stories in America Theatre, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Mark Taper Forum's Asian Theatre Workshop, New Conervatory Theatre Center, Playwrights Foundation, South Coast Repertory, and TheatreWorks.
He's gunning for a Pulitzer, and is willing to sleep with anyone or anything to get it. Please make a note of it.
Publications and Other Writings
THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was published by Dramatic Publishing. DONUT HOLES IN ORBIT was published in Smith and Kraus's EST Marathon 1998: The One-Act Plays. Some of Prince's monologues appear in the Smith and Kraus anthologies, Best Men's Stage Monologues 2002, Best Women's Stage Monologues 2002, and Audition Aresenal For Men In Their 20s. And his one-act play, CRITICAL MASS, was published by the online literary journal, Lodestar Quarterly.
As a journalist, he was formerly on the writing staff of Theatre Bay Area magazine (formerly Callboard), where he was also Associate Editor, and The National Notary magazine (no, that's not a joke).
As a blogger, he writes Bamboo Nation, a popular arts and entertainment blog, and is a regular contributor to The Bilerico Project.
As a copywriter, he's worked on numerous projects for Fox Searchlight, A&E Television, CBS Films, and Showtime.
Teaching and Speaking
Prince teaches writing for stage and screen in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California and in the David Henry Hwang Writers Institute at East West Players.
He has also led writing workshops for various institutions in Northern and Southern California for both teenagers and adults: Cerro Coso Community College, Kearny Street Workshop's Intergenerational Writers Lab, New Conservatory Theatre Center's Playwrights Workshop (which he helped launch), Playwrights Foundation, TheatreWorks' Young Playwrights' Initiative, French-American International School of San Francisco, Los Altos High School, Palo Alto High School, Saratoga High School, and Sir Francis Drake High School.
He has been a guest speaker and/or a guest panelist at the California State Summer School for the Arts, California State University-Fresno, California State University-Los Angeles, Pomona College, San Francisco Arts Institute, San Francisco Day School, San Francisco State University, the Smithsonian Institution, University of California-Berkeley, University of California-Riverside, University of Colorado-Boulder, Westridge School, Asian American Theater Conference, Asian and Pacific Islander American Heritage Month Creative Writing Competition Awards Ceremony, and Bay Area Playwrights Festival. He has also moderated panels for Asian Pacific Friends of the Theatre, East West Players, Theatre Bay Area, and University of Southern California.
He has also acted as a script consultant for Kaiser Permanente Education Theatre Programs and occasionally does private script consultation on a freelance basis. For money. Like a whore.
Personal History
Prince spent the first part of his thrilling life in places such as Indianapolis, Indiana (where his kindergarten teacher couldn't pronounce his Thai name "Khamolpat" or his nickname "Bin" and arbitrarily crowned him "Prince"), Bangkok, Thailand (where he learned to eat foods spicy enough to rip most people new assholes), and Monrovia, California (a suburb so quaint that you wish there were a few crackhouses somewhere). After spending 12 years living in San Francisco (where he received his BA in Film and MFA in Playwriting from San Francisco State University), he now lives in the Los Angeles area with his beloved cat, Pork Chop.
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