Joseph Robinette

Librettist

Joseph Robinette is one of the most prolific American playwrights living today. Mr. Robinette has authored or co-authored 51 published plays and musicals. His works have been produced in all fifty states and in several foreign countries, including England, Australia, Canada, Holland, Germany, Spain, Japan, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. Twelve of his works have been translated into foreign languages, and another four have been anthologized with forwards by Carol Channing and Maurice Sendak. His plays have been produced by Lincoln Center, Theatreworks, Coterie Theatre, Pittsburgh Playhouse, Dallas Children’s Theatre, Barter Theatre, Laguna Playhouse, Connecticut Children’s Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre and the BBC, among others.

Robinette collaborated with E.B.White on the authorized stage version of Charlotte’s Web, and he wrote the musical version with composer Charles Strouse (Annie and Bye, Bye, Birdie). Other authorized dramatizations include Stuart Little, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and The Paper Chase.

Robinette is the recipient of numerous playwriting awards, including the Charlotte Chorpenning Cup, awarded to “an outstanding writer of children’s plays who has received national recognition” and the American Alliance for Theatre and Education’s best dramatization of the year for Sarah, Plain and Tall. In 2006, he received the Children’s Theatre Foundation of America medallion for his “body of dramatic works for children and young people in the United States and beyond.”

Robinette is a professor emeritus from Rowan University (NJ) where he taught for 34 years. In 2002, he received the Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award. He has led numerous workshops at elementary, middle and high schools and at state and national conventions, and was recently the keynote speaker at the Georgia State Theatre Conference. He has adjudicated a number of play festivals and has served as a judge for four national playwriting competitions.

Robinette is a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the American Alliance for Theatre and Education, and he is a founding member of Opera for Youth. He has guest-lectured at several universities and has taught playwriting at the Cape Cod Writers Conference, the Ohio State Writers Series and the Philadelphia Writers Workshop.