Paula Caplan(1947-2021)

Paula J Caplan (Paula Joan Caplan) is an actor, director, producer, multi-award-winning playwright, screenwriter, advocate/activist, and clinical and research psychologist. She was born and raised in Springfield, Missouri, where she began acting and writing while a young child. She received her A.B.in English from Radcliffe College, Harvard University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology from Duke University. She won top teaching awards from the University of Toronto and Harvard University. She is the author of 11 nonfiction books, the most recent of which won three national awards for nonfiction. After raising her two children, she returned to theatre, first as an actor, studying with Pat Hegnauer in Providence, Rhode Island, and performing Off-Off-Broadway and in Providence, Boston, and Toronto. She then studied in Los Angeles at Estelle Harman's Actors Workshop, where Eden Harman Bernardy listened to her telling stories and urged her to begin writing plays. She did as Eden suggested and later learned from Rudy Langlais to write film treatments and screenplays.