William Missouri Downs

William Missouri Downs is a comedy writer whose work spans television, theatre, textbooks, and film. He began in Hollywood as a script PA on NBC’s Moonlighting and went on to write for My Two Dads, Amen, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He has also sold a feature to Imagine Entertainment and optioned a television pilot.

As a playwright, Downs has had more than 350 productions across the United States and internationally, including Spain, Canada, South Africa, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Switzerland, Austria, Israel, India, the UAE, Australia, and South Korea. His plays Women Playing Hamlet and The Exit Interview received rolling premieres from the National New Play Network, and How to Steal a Picasso and Mad Gravity were finalists at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. His work has been produced by theatres such as Orlando Shakespeare Theater, San Diego Repertory Theatre, and the Kennedy Center.

He has published fourteen plays with Concord Theatricals, Playscripts, Heuer Publishing, TRW, and Next Stage Press. His books include The Art of Theatre, now in its fifth edition, and Screenplay: Writing the Picture, along with two guides to playwriting, Naked Playwriting and Playwriting: From Formula to Form. He is also the author of two novels, Five Minutes from Chaos and Immaculate Deception. All available on Amazon.

Downs holds an MFA in screenwriting from UCLA and an MFA in acting from the University of Illinois.