Playing with Pain (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781542457101)

Bernard Mendillo writes novels, memoirs, plays and newspaper columns. And he also works as a ghostwriter for those who need help writing a novel, a memoir or a screenplay. Mendillo has published three novels-Dancing Naked with the Devil, Marvin Piersoll and Electra 225. He's also published three memoirs-Football, Bella in America and Nuns! His novel Marvin Piersoll won the fiction category in the 2011 New York Book Festival Mendillo has had 18 productions of 11 full-length plays-two of them off-off-Broadway; and two others have received off-off-Broadway staged readings. He's been produced regionally in Massachusetts, upstate New York and Los Angeles. His new play-The Nickel Jar-is a serious comedy about a man desperately trying to save his marriage and his family. He's written two dramas based on classic works: A House that God Hates-a modern version of Aeschylus' Agamemnon; and Agnes in Camelot-a modern retelling of the Arthurian legend. His wildly dark comedy Mates won the Wykeham Rise National Playwrighting Contest and was produced off-off-Broadway. Eventually, this led to the Mates Trilogy-with all three plays being presented at the Little Theater in Binghamton, NY. The second play of the trilogy, Mates in Paradise, was also produced at the Orpheum Repertory, in Foxboro, Massachusetts. Mendillo's comedy of his generation, The Last Baby Boomer, received a staged reading by the New England Repertory Company, as part of its Festival of New Plays; it was produced off-off-Broadway at the Impact Theater; and it received an off-off-Broadway reading at New Perspectives. Mendillo was playwright-in-residence for the Orpheum Repertory Company in Massachusetts. He was a founding board member of the New England Repertory Company and was its playwright-in-residence. Mendillo also has extensive journalism experience; he's written more than 600 works of short fiction and feature articles and humor columns for the Providence Journal, Canton Journal, and Warwick Beacon. Mendillo grew up in Rhode Island; he studied writing at Brown University-where he earned a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Creative Writing/Playwrighting. Mendillo lives in Canton, Massachusetts.