Joe Hortua

In 2004, New York City's Manhattan Theatre Club world-premiered Joe Hortua’s play BETWEEN US, which opened to excellent reviews and noteworthy Off-Broadway attention. "New York" magazine compared Hortua and his play to Harold Pinter and David Mamet. The play was subsequently translated into Hebrew at the Be’er Theatre in Israel and into Spanish at The Met Theatre in Los Angeles. In 2005, Kevin Spacey’s Old Vic Theatre in London included Hortua's play WORLD THROWN TIZZY in their New Voices Festival. This play was originally commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. It was further developed in the summer of 2005 by the Sundance Institute, the Cape Cod Theatre Project, and the Hartford Stage New Works Festival. Kyra Sedgewick optioned his play BURNING for a New York City premiere. The show was also produced in Los Angeles at the East L.A. Repertory Theatre. His first play, MAKING IT, received its world premiere in 2002 at the prestigious South Coast Repertory theatre after being developed at the Sundance Institute’s Theatre Lab. He has also been commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Joe Hortua was on the writing staff of the CBS television series "Cane," starring Jimmy Smits. In 2006, he wrote a dramatic series pilot for The CW Network and Warner Brothers Television titled “1 Mercy Street,” which is based on the south-Boston upbringing of actor/performer Donnie Wahlberg. That year he also wrote a television pilot titled “The Border” for Paramount Television and the Showtime Network, about the mass migration of undocumented workers across the U.S./Mexico border (Perry Simon, Executive Producer, “The 4400”; co-creator, James Sadwith, “Elvis”). Born and raised in Chicago to a Colombian father and a Spanish mother, he was the first member of his extended family to receive a college degree. Tony Kushner (“Angels in America,” “Munich”) chose Hortua as one of his Top 10 favorite young playwrights in the "New York Times" article, "Hurricane Kushner Hits the Heartland." Joe Hortua lives on both coasts with his wife and two boys.