Author Profile:  Jason Cannon

Jason Cannon is a best-selling author and publisher, as well as an award-winning director, actor, playwright, improviser, and teacher.  He has an MFA in Directing, a Masters in Drama, and a quarter-century in the professional theatre.  Jason has 100+ credits as an actor, 120+ as a director, and as a playwright he has had ten plays produced.  Most recently he wrote, directed, and published Clowns Like Me for Lifeline Productions.  This critically acclaimed one-man show based on true stories of living with mental illness had its world premiere in May of 2023 and is currently touring.  Jason was lead developer on the cabaret A Place in the Sun:  A Tribute To Stevie Wonder for Florida Studio Theatre, which had its world premiere in November 2022.  Jason created Old Enough to Know Better at FST between 2013 and 2015, a documentary theatre piece built out of almost a hundred interviews with Sarasota residents ages 55-101, and continued this interview/documentary project at FST with Last Rights in 2016, a play exploring end-of-life issues.  Jason was Book Writer on Wendy's Shadow, a modern folk/rock adaptation of the Peter Pan and Wendy story, created with the songwriting team of Maglione and Ruiz.  Wendy's Shadow was presented at NYMF and was featured by Playbill.com as a “Top 10 Show Not to Miss at NYMF.”  Maglione and Ruiz also wrote original music for Jason's adaptation of The Comedy of Errors into a rollicking Western musical for Ozark Actors Theatre's 2014 season.  Jason premiered his first full-length script in St. Louis in November 2004 with Historyonics, who commissioned and produced his play The Eagle and Child:  C.S.  Lewis and J.R.R.  Tolkien.  This play has received two subsequent productions, at Belmont University in Nashville, TN, and at Jason's alma mater, Greenville College (now University) in Greenville, IL.  Jason's second script, Aesop's Greatest Hits!, a romp through the world of fables written for young audiences, toured area schools with the St. Louis Shakespeare Company and is now published by Pioneer Drama Service.  Jason was then commissioned by Shakespeare Festival St. Louis to adapt The Merry Wives of Windsor for their education and touring program.  Windsor live! re-imagines Shakespeare's classic comedy as an American Idol-style reality competition where the characters vie to become the Next Great Prankster.  Windsor live! toured bi-state area schools during the spring semester of 2009.  Jason's 10-minute play Wheelchair Chicken was selected and presented by two new play festivals.  He is currently working on a second commission for Lifeline Productions, which will have its world premiere in May 2024.  Proud member AEA and SDC.  Visit jason-cannon.com