Joni Ravenna

Screenwriter

Newport Beach, California

Member Since:
February 2022

Last online:
> 2 weeks ago

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About Joni

A graduate of USC, Joni Ravenna is a multi-hyphenate: TV writer, journalist, published author and award-winning playwright. This year she was chosen one of six for “The Playground Pool of Writers “ LA, SF and NYC’s leading playwright incubation program. She is a member of The Dramatists Guild and APAP NYC (2021) as well as WGA-West.

Her critically acclaimed, multiple honors, one man play, “Beethoven and Misfortune Cookies” is a New Works of Merit Honoree (2016). In 2021 was one of only two plays chosen by the Austin Public Theatre for their New Work Festival. The one- man play has been produced on stage and virtually, scores of times across the country. It was chosen by Smith and Krause for “Best Men’s Monologues 2021.”

Other notable plays include her short comedy “The Green Grocer,” most recently seen in the Short and Sweet Fest, Australia (2021), it is a Dublin Festival Winner and a Tulip Festival (NYC) Finalist play which has been produced hundreds of times all over. Her full-length play, “For Pete’s Sake” (Brooklyn Publishers) ran for a summer at the Chance Theatre in Anaheim where it was nominated BEST NEW PLAY by the OC Weekly. It was a finalist in Playwrights Circle Nat’l. Playwriting Competition and winner / Best Play by DP Weekly (Palm Springs).

Joni is also Co- Author of the book, "You Let Some GIRL Beat You?- The Ann Meyers Drysdale Story" (Behler Publications, 2012) which Forbes Magazine called "a stunning portrayal of one of today's legendary women's basketball treasures." The book was chosen runner up out of over 1700 published submissions by the Pipeline Group. In addition to the generous monetary gift, Pipeline is also pursuing a development deal.

A TV writer by trade, Ravenna wrote for the series "Earth Trek" for PBS National. She has had the honor of working with many people she admires such as David Lynch, Forrest Whitaker, Sean Astin and Ally Sheedy. Other TV writing credits include: "Great Sports Vacations" (a 36 part Cable-Ace Nominated TV series for the Travel Channel), "The Donovan Concert, Live at the Kodak" for PBS, "Hello Paradise", (a 72 part series for KVCR -pbs). Over the years, Ravenna has interviewed leaders in various fields including: Sean Connery, tennis great, Lindsay Davenport, Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Jamal Wilkes, Julius Erving, Sugar Ray Leonard and Brad Pitt to name a few.

Gender:
Female

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God's Waiting Room Budget: $1M - $5M | Comedy ‘GOD’S WAITING ROOM’* By Joni Ravenna and Eric Donald ‘God’s Waiting Room’ AKA Palm Springs, California, where the only thing that moves fast is ambulance dispatch. The natives are winded, the snow-birds are molting and boys wear pink. It’s the land of rays, gays, and grays. Here, taut-faced, diamond-encrusted, female fifty-somethings try to look thirty-something, and their forty-something doctors help them. One such accomplice, gynecologist, Jerry Hamilton, replaces more hormones in one year than Vegas does light bulbs. And he’s got the bucks to prove it. Jerry is attractive, a father of six, and a more than generous provider to his beautiful, church-going wife, Jackie. They are the perfect, tight-knit family, but for one thing: Jerry is gay, and his loved ones are about to find out the hard way. To make matters worse, the discovery comes on the heels of the death of middle-child, eleven-year-old Johnny Hamilton, a one-boy, skate-boarding, Greek Chorus through whose eyes the story unfolds. Johnny is a normal, eleven-year-old kid, only dead… and with a much more colorful vocabulary. His growing concern is that the family – in the midst of their dilemma – seems to have forgotten that he ever existed at all, as evidenced by the large family portrait taken after his death which sits at the top of the stairs. Why he's stuck in Limbo is mystery to us all (until the final episode of the season). Jerry’s older sons, Jeremy and Jason, appear more distraught by the damage Dad’s outing will have on their image at high school rather than the damage it will do to the family unit. Middle daughter, thirteen-year-old Jessica, worries about the direction her own budding sexuality might take, and the two youngest siblings, Jimmy and Jenny, just want to know where the Halloween candy went. The pilot culminates as it began, with a grand ball at the Hamilton manor. Only now, no freaky costumes, just a somewhat awkward celebration of an entirely new type of family with an entirely new beginning… One that’s perfectly suited to life in God's Waiting Room.