Department
Theatre Arts

Program
Theatre Arts: Production/Performance

Office Location
Elstad Auditorium  Annex

Email Address
willy.conley@gallaudet.edu

2007-2008 Schaefer Professor.

A professional actor, director, sign master, and playwright, Conley has won awards from VSA arts 2000 Playwrights Discovery Competition at the Kennedy Center, the PEW/TCG National Theatre Artist Residency Fellowship, the Sam Edwards Deaf Playwrights Competition, The American Deaf Drama Festival, the Baltimore Playwrights Festival, the '97 and '99 NeWorks Festival in Boston, the Laurent Clerc Cultural Fund, and the Lamia Ink! International One-Page-Play Festival. Published plays include The Hearing Test (in No Walls of Stone), Broken Spokes (Tactile Mind Press), The water falls. (Tactile Mind Press), and The Universal Drum (Theatre for Young Audiences Today). As an actor, Conley has performed with the National Theatre of the Deaf, Pilobolus Dance Theatre, Amaryllis Theatre Co, Colonial Theatre, Shakespeare-in-the-Park in Rhode Island, Fairmount Theatre of the Deaf, New York Deaf Theatre, Quest: Arts for Everyone, Sunshine Too, and Center Stage. Recently, he appeared in an episode of NBC's Law & Order: CI 'Silencer'; other films include: Wrong Game, Stille Liebe (Secret Love). He holds an M.A. in Creative Writing/Playwriting from Boston University (where he studied with Nobel laureate Derek Walcott), and an M.F.A. in Theatre from Towson University. He is an Associate Artist with Center Stage, an Affiliate Artist with Quest, and an Associate member of The Dramatists Guild. Most people do not know that he was the first Deaf person to receive national certification as a Registered Biological Photographer (#319) after having graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Biomedical Photographic Communication.