About me
Matt Foss (WGA East) was named to Austin Film Festival/Movie Maker Magazine's Top 25 Screenwriters to Watch for 2023 and his first feature, Lone Wolves, will hit festivals this spring. He is a Page and Final Draft Finalist and Semi-Finalist at Austin. He is an Autistic comedy and adaptation writer.
He received his MFA in acting from Chicago’s Roosevelt University and PhD in theatre studies and directing from Wayne State University in Detroit. Recent professional credits include Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Oracle Theatre, Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, American Blues Theatre, Krymov Lab NYC, and Russia's Meyerhold Theatre Center.
Originally a wildlife biologist in Montana, Matt began his career as a theatremaker in Chicago.
His adaptation of of All Quiet on the Western Front, created in association with the Remarque estate, won the 2018 Kennedy Center David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award and the 2020 Chicago Jeff Award for Best New Work and Best Production.
He adapted and directed Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle for Oracle Productions in Chicago in 2014. The production received Chicago Jeff Award Nominations for Outstanding Production, Director, Ensemble, and won for best new adaptation. In 2012 his production of Six Characters at Iowa State University received the Kennedy Center's American College Theatre Festival's National Award for Outstanding Production of a Play and Outstanding Director of a Play.
In 2016, his touring production of The Glass Menagerie performed at Russia’s Moscow Art Theatre.
Most recently he's been translating his skills as a writer and adapter on the stage for projects on the screen, including a pseudo-doc short titled SONS OF TOLEDO, telling the stories of the city's Black owned Barber shops and their work on behalf of the neighborhoods they serve. The short film has won a number of top awards at festivals like the Hip Hop Film Festival, DC Film Fest, Phoenix Film Festival and was a semi-finalist for the HBO Short Film Award.
He is currently working on an opera version of A River Runs Through It for the Norman Maclean estate for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of the novella.
He teaches at the University of Toledo as well as screenwriting and playwriting at the Toledo Correctional Institute-a state ran super max prison.