Marc Lapadula

Marc Andrew Lapadula (April 22, 1960 – August 9, 2022) was an American playwright, screenwriter and senior lecturer in Film Studies at Yale University, where he led the screenwriting program.

Education Lapadula held a BA from University of Pennsylvania, where he studied English and Irish drama, as well as an MA from Malcolm Bradbury’s Creative Writing Workshop at the University of East Anglia. He also had a MFA from the Iowa Playwrights’ Workshop at the University of Iowa.

Work Lapadula was a playwright whose works were produced in New York, England, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. His stage plays included Not by Name, Two Shakes, Old Young Men, Men Like Us, The Rains Change, Serial and In Uniform Thanksgiving, an absurdist comedy in the Joe Orton tradition. He also had several original screenplays commissioned or optioned, including Distant Influence, Night Bloom, and At Risk. Lapadula also had screen adaptations of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog and Miguel de Unamuno’s Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr. One of Lapadula's last feature-length screenplays, Person of Interest, was a work-in-progress as of 2016.

Lapadula's teaching style was described as hands on, with his lectures evolving in a free form and intuitive manner. Though the work load and expectations in his courses, according to former students, could be demanding, he was known for his genuine care for his students and desire to inspire them to continue their development as writers.