WRITER DIRECTOR PRODUCER PROFESSOR
Walter Allen Bennett Jr. has written and/or produced, and executive produced more than 200 episodes of series television. His break into television came as a writer on the long-running Emmy Award-winning The Cosby Show. From there, he became a writer/producer on 704 Hauser Street, created by Norman Lear, and then became a producer on the hit comedy In the House, starring LL Cool J and Debbie Allen. Next, Bennett became the executive producer of The Steve Harvey Show. He has written pilots for CBS, FOX, and a collaboration with R&B artist Alicia Keys for the Nickelodeon Network.
In film, Bennett wrote and directed Contradictions of the Heart, an independent feature. His script, Article One, was a finalist in the Sundance Writers Workshop and a semifinalist in the Chesterfield Screenwriting Competition. An award-winning playwright, Bennett has written 15 plays and has been the recipient of such honors as a National Endowment for the Arts Playwriting Grant, the Best Play Award from the Company of Angels Theatre in Los Angeles, The Voices Unsilenced Festival Award; the New Professional Theatre National Playwriting Award, a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Playwriting Fellowship; and citations from the New York City Council, the Brooklyn Borough President, the Brooklyn Congressional Office, and the New Jersey State Assembly. His productions have been staged throughout the country at such esteemed venues as Lincoln Center’s Alice TullyHall, The Henry Street Settlement, Amistad World Theatre, Seattle Group Theatre, Theater Three in Dallas, Yale Repertory Theatre, and The Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference.
Bennett holds an M.F.A. in playwriting from The Yale School of Drama and an M.F.A. in acting from UCLA. He has served on the faculty lecturing and teaching studio workshops in theater and or African American studies and film at St. John’s University, Indiana University South Bend, University of North Carolina Fayetteville, California State University Los Angeles, Loyola Marymount University, and the University of California, Riverside. He was a guest lecturer at Kent State University, Sinclair College, and Yale University. and served as a full-time Professor in Television and Film in Atlanta at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he taught Acting, Screenwriting, Playwriting, and Directing. He is the head of Acting and Directing at Grossmont College in San Diego, California. Mr. Bennett is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild, Writers Guild of America, Actors Equity Association, and the Screen Actors Guild.