Warren Leight
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Warren Leight (born circa 1957) is a Tony Award-winning American playwright, screenwriter, film director, and television producer.
Raised in the Sunnyside section of the borough of Queens and the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Leight began his writing career with the 1980 horror flick Mother's Day, followed by the documentary Before the Nickelodeon: The Cinema of Edwin S. Porter, the indie Stuck on You, and the Miramax release The Night We Never Met, which he also directed and which earned him a nomination at the Deauville Film Festival. He also scripted the 1996 Greg Kinnear comedy Dear God.
For his first theatrical project, Leight teamed with composer-lyricist Charles Strouse on the 1985 musical Mayor, inspired by Ed Koch and his dealings with Leona Helmsley and Bess Myerson. It ran for 185 performances at the Top of the Gate in Greenwich Village before transferring uptown to the Latin Quarter for another seventy. His efforts garnered him a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Book.
Leight's 1998 play Side Man won him the Tony Award and nominations for both the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In 2001 the Manhattan Theatre Club staged his Glimmer, Glimmer & Shine with John Spencer. He contributed works to The 24 Hour Plays, a unique theatrical event in which six short plays are written, rehearsed, directed, and performed within 24 hours, in 2003, 2004, and 2005. His 2006 off-Broadway effort, No Foreigners Beyond This Point, earned him another Drama Desk nomination.
Since 2004, Leight has been the executive producer of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, for which he frequently pens scripts.
Leight presently lives in the West Village, Manhattan in Manhattan.
