Michael Swiskay

New York City, New York

Member Since:
August 2011

Last online:
2 weeks ago

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About Michael

For Michael, life has been a vivid, sometimes harrowing experience. Now he is driven to process it into film and theater narrative that will capture the attention of and emotionally move audiences.

Following studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Wharton, he worked for a Hedge Fund, then quit to pursue an acting career. Took a “real job”, in the brutal mercenary world of non-carnivorous “cannibalism”, that is executive search, more commonly known as “headhunting”. The engagement allowed flexibility to pursue the acting. An extremely effective 'cannibal', soon came a London relocation to build a European business with the acting 'on hold'. In those days was the business good, the money easy, the life decadent and Michael a very bod boy. Then the flirtation with mortality and 13 day coma. The job ended. less than favorably. He returned to acting, performing in Edinburgh during the festival and on New York's theater Row. Studies in dramatic writing with Robert McKee, Milan Stitt and at the Ensemble Studio Theatre were next. Now he is a writer in residence at the Simon Studio, a member of the American Renaissance Theater Company (aka ARTC), the Independent Feature Project (aka IFP) and the Dramatists Guild. THE MEANING, an autobiographical one act play, the winner of a One-Act-Play Festival in New York. ORBITING EZMERELDA, (originally titled 'Orbiting Frieda' and rewritten as a feature film script) a play in two acts, chosen semi-finalist in the American Theater Co-Op spring competition. ENTERPRISING, a finalist in ‘The Movie Deal’ screenplay contest, chosen as the best dramatic script at the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival and recipient of Honorable mention at the van Gogh awards of the Amsterdam Film Festival.

Gender:
Male

Height:
5' 8"

Weight:
165

Body type:
Athletic

Hair:
Receding

Hair color:
Black

Eyes:
Brown

Ethnicity:
Eastern European/Spanish

Certifications

Photos

Loglines

Enterprising Drama In Saul’s world everybody’s got something to sell as this African-American financier boldly navigates tacit racism and triumphs over economic collapse inciting scandal while an Amsterdam Red-Light District prostitute enchants him
Cannibals Comedy After university graduation, an intelligent and principled Adonis takes a job with a “headhunter” and triumphs over unscrupulous colleagues as he “gets the girl”, a Westernized Muslim whose devout twin introduces a farcical collision of Western and Muslim cultures.
Bujama Dreams Drama ⋄ Romance The nasty misunderstanding drives the San Francisco couple apart and it takes the superstar salesman’s self-discovery on a subsequent Latin-American adventure to compel rescue of the charming lady accountant from a dating wasteland. (Co-writer Braeden Mass}
Orbiting Ezmerelda Comedy ⋄ Drama ⋄ Independent The world’s richest man’s new business entails an artist’s fake suicide at an auction of his painting as the eminent art curator who discovered him obsesses about maternity, it vetoed by her fiercely anti-paternal husband as the global economy collapses.

Credits

Orbiting Frieda, later titled Orbiting Ezmerelda (2002)
Theater by Semi-Finalist , American Theater Co- Op Spring Festival. Writer
The Meaning (1988)
Theater by Dir.-Tom Ross, Village Gate Festival of One Act Plays, Writer

Awards

'The Meaning' Winner, Village Gate Festival of one act plays
'Enterprising' Best Dramatic Script, Screenplay comp., NYIIFF and finalist in the Movie Deal Screenplay contest.
'Orbiting Ezmerelda' finalist for the Robert J. Pickering Award for Playwriting Excellence.