Equivocation: Meet the Playwright

Playwright Bill Cain

A native New Yorker, Father Bill Cain is a Jesuit priest and writes for the stage and screen. Mr. Cain grew up in Queens during the civil rights era, attended Jesuit schools, and tutored in Bedford- Stuyvesant  as a young man. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Boston College. After graduation, Mr. Cain founded the Boston Shakespeare Company where he directed most of Shakespeares’s canon from 1975-1982. Mr. Cain then moved to Lower East Manhattan to teach and write. He landed a contract to be the writer and producer of the ABC series “Nothing Sacred” about a Catholic priest who begins to question his faith. It won the Peabody Award in 1998 and was also boycotted by the Catholic League as blasphemous. Equivocation is Mr. Cain’s second play – it workshopped in Palo Alto at Theatreworks and premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and then opened in New York at the Manhattan Theatre Club. His third play, 9 Circles, premiered at the Marin Theatre Company, and his latest play, How to Write a New Book for the Bible premiered at Berkeley Rep in their 2011-2012 season. For the small screen, Mr. Cain has written an adaptation of “Clover” for the Hallmark channel and HBO, “Nightjohn,” which was named best American film of the year by The New Yorker. He also wrote “Thicker Than Blood” (TNT), which was an adaptation of Stand-up Tragedy, his first play, then “Everything That Rises” (starring Mandy Patinkin), “Papa’s Angels” (starring Scott Bakula, Cynthia Nixon, and Eva Marie Saint), and “Sounder.” Awards include: Steinberg New Play Award (first ever recipient two years in a row), multiple Edgerton grants, Helen Hayes Awards , the Joe A. Callaway Award, a Peabody, the WGA Award for Episodic Drama and a Christopher Award, among others.