T.J. Elliott

Playwright

T.J. co-wrote 2019’s Alms with Joe Queenan, which was staged as an Equity Showcase at TheaterWorks in NYC. That SRO comeback ended his 35-year hiatus from Off-Broadway. In those lost years, he produced, directed, and performed among casts of thousands in a mélange of corporate telenovelas and tragic, comic, melodramatic, and semi-absurd organizational performance art.

Earlier stage-works included Lazy Eye at Warren Robertson’s Studio Theatre, as well as writing, directing, and producing two unexpected break-even Off-Off Broadway runs of the Captive Audiences revues. He also appeared regionally as an actor in The Devil’s Disciple (Reverend Anthony Anderson), Sexual Perversity in Chicago (Bernie), and The Dumbwaiter (Ben). In the early 1980s, T.J. studied with Alan Brody, Terry Schreiber, and Jill Andre.

In the Spring and Summer of 2020, T.J. produced live on Zoom for eleven performances the dark comedy, Grudges, also cowritten with Queenan — to whom he owes his return to playwrighting. In November 2020, he directed Within The Context of No Context celebrating the 40th anniversary of the publication of that momentous essay by the late George W.S. Trow. In December, Knowledge Workings Theater premiered his mostly fake Swedish screwball comedy Keeping Right. Genealogy by Queenan and Elliott will premiere in Madison Wisconsin at Broom Street Theater in November 2021. T.J. lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife, Marjorie Phillips Elliott, with whom he co-founded Knowledge Workings Theater