Screenwriter | Playwright | Producer
Joanna Castle Miller is a writer and producer whose work has appeared on Fortune, Time, NBC, VH1, E! Entertainment, PBS, and Food Network. Her plays been developed through New York University, We the Women Collective, No Rules Theatre Company, Lab26, and the Last Frontier Theatre Conference. She is the founder and executive producer of Wait Don’t Leave Productions.
Recent work includes the plays The Storehouse, around and around and around the static sun (McNerney Award Finalist), Sh@med (commission – Georgia Southwestern University), and Fox News the Musical (But What If We Did). Her short plays include The Being Heard Academy, The World’s Next Tooth Fairy Is Marci Peterson (Pulp Stage), Parasite, and The Coaster. Other work includes Sorta My Thing (writer; featured series, Funny or Die) and The New York Philharmonic’s Sweeney Todd (assistant producer; Emmy Award – Outstanding Special Class Program). Her Oscar-qualified short film Ash is currently in distribution with Network Ireland TV.
As a writer, Joanna has focused much of her work on the way we remember and misremember our own stories. She regularly incorporates comedy, history, and magical realism to discuss the themes of feminism, shame, religion, redemption, and how these ideas interact.
As a producer, Joanna champions new voices in theatre and film with the aim to make both industries as inclusive as possible. At seventeen, she launched Firstchance Forum, a theatre company dedicated to the development of new work by young artists. At NYU she ran the Gallatin New Play Series and edited the Literacy Review, which showcased new work by ESL and adult literacy students across New York City. Through her company Wait Don’t Leave, she continues to bring together diverse teams that fight for better representation of women and minorities in theatre and in film.
While studying at NYU, Joanna concentrated in dramatizing historical memory with a special focus on Spanish religious history. She continues to write and produce content related to Jewish history in Spain, religion, immigration, refugees, and the environment, and how we might correct the record from the way these stories have often been told.
Joanna is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA and the Dramatists Guild and enjoys good bourbon, bad words, and quality time.
