Seth Zvi Rosenfeld
This page is an archive and testament to the thirty years I’ve spent as an award winning Playwright, Filmmaker and TV writer/producer. I credit my youth cemented to a loud corner on Amsterdam Avenue in NYC with setting my imagination afire. It was the characters and experiences that I had on the block that formed my world view and ethos. A lot of my early work both in plays and film are love-letters to that corner. That would include the Play Servy-N-Bernice 4Ever and the films A Brothers Kiss, King of the Jungle and the NetFlix series The Get Down. It has been said that my work chronicles the collisions of cultures in Urban America.
Theatre
In my twenties a series of unfortunate/fortunate events made me understand the life I was living was going to take me straight to hell. Driven by a need to write about what I’d been through, I set about trying to become a Playwright. I secured a waiters job and I spent my days writing. I was unschooled but enthusiastic. I was nurtured by workshops and writers groups at the Ensemble Studio Theater and the now defunct Double Image and Angel Theatre companies. Kate Long, Helen Mayer, Susan Golomb and Israel Horovitz were all very important in my development. My first production was a short play called “The Blackeyed Brothers” it won the Samuel French award and got me my first agent. My first full length play was The Writing on the Wall, produced by the Westbeth Theatre Center. New Line Cinema purchased the film rights and I was hired to write the screenplay. Other plays include: A Brother's Kiss and After the Marching Stopped, produced by Angel Theatre at Intar and retitled Brothers Mothers and Others; Servy-n-Bernice 4ever, produced commercially Off-Broadway at the Provincetown Playhouse; A Passover Story, commissioned by the late Joe Papp for The Public Theater; The Flatted Fifth, Everything is Turning Into Beautiful, and Downtown Race Riot, produced by The New Group. The tiny plays; La Familia, My Starship, and PS: I'm glad you sent your hair for Naked Angels and the Hip-Hop Theatre festival and Handball produced by Summerstage in NYC. I’m curently at work on a new play and also a musical.
Film
I started screenwriting once New Line Cinema bought my play The Writing on the Wall, and then soon after Columbia Pictures bought the film rights to Servy-n-Bernice 4Ever. I was completely green. I had no idea that screenwriters could be rewritten by other screenwriters. I had no idea that you could be paid to write a film and it would not get made. Screenwriting changed my financial situation but made me hungry for the creative control I had in the theater. I developed scripts and doctored others for most of the major studios but the only film I had my name on was Sunset Park which was made at Tri-Star with Jersey Films. I was encouraged by industry friends to start directing. My first short film was a silent film starring Mike Rapaport, it’s called “Under the Bridge”. It won some awards and was bought by BRAVO (Bravo was airing short films interstitially at the time). I was invited to be a writing and directing fellow at the Sundance Institute which helped me make feature film directorial debut. The film is called “A Brothers Kiss”, which was based on the Off-Broadway play and starred Nick Chinlund and Mike Raynor who both had appeared in the play. Reviews praised the performances and attributed my upbringing in creating "a realistic sense of street life with hardly a false note." Next up, I wrote and directed the film, King of the Jungle, starring John Leguizamo, , Marisa Tomei and Rosario Dawson. I went on to write and direct what might well have been the first web series, it’s called “We Deliver”” and it follows the inner working of a 1990’s cannabis delivery service in NYC. My films have played in many major festivals including Venice and Deauville. I spent most of the past decade or so working in TV. But I recently fell back in love with filmmaking. My most recent film is Sunday at Il Posto Accanto, starring Victor Rasuk and Danny Hoch. Next up will be “Legit” starring Steve Buscemi and John Turturro.
Television
At some point it became hard to ignore that much of the quality work being written had migrated to TV. HBO, FX, AMC, SHOWTIME and the STREAMERS were all making incredible work. I was able cut my teeth in the writer's room for two seasons of HBO's "How to Make it in America" I wrote and produced several pilots for HBO, SHOWTIME, FX, CBS, A&E, FOX, NETFLIX and DISNEY+ , one of them, "The Get Down" went to series on Netflix and was directed by Baz Luhrmann. Most recently I worked on the Amazon series "Them”, for which I was nominated for the Writers Guild of America’s “Outstanding Writing Award.”
Lastly, I am lost for words when trying to describe the feeling that I have for the combination of karma, kismet, hard work and innate ability that has allowed me to make a life in the entertainment industry. It has given my life meaning and I still wake up daily and go after it in the pursuit of mastery.
Thanks for visiting!
Seth
Contact
Sasha Levites
<SLevites@fkks.com> 212.705.4864