Paul Werner has been a member of Gulf Coast Playwrights since 2013. He has been a writer, director and actor in New Orleans for 50 years. His writing credits include Dramas : Jibber-Jabber, Hold Fishy Tight, X210-The Genesis Project, Prime Time; Musicals (Book only) : Make Me A Rainbow, Aftermath, Quest, Omega Point, After The Applause, One Star Rising, Upstage/Downstage, and ten one act musicals. He also was staff writer for 52 episodes of the local television series Morgus Presents. His most recent work has been with the Southern Rep 6x6 and 3x3 series where he wrote twenty 10 minute plays and two one acts. He is the retired chair of the Media Arts department of the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and taught theatre at Benjamin Franklin High School and Mt. Carmel Academy for many years. He received his B.A. from St. Joseph Seminary College and M.A. from the University of New Orleans where he won Best Graduate Director and Outstanding Graduate Student awards.
He started his theatrical career in summer stock at the Actors & Writers Workshop in Atlanta where he won the Best Supporting Actor award. In his limber youth he formed The Mime Squad after studying with Tony Montanaro and created and performed original works in this style including In The Mimelight and Reverie. The group also performed mime pieces adapted to poetry for a local PBS show, Students Choice. In 1979 with composer Robert Moore and choreographer Kenneth Raphael he founded Write Your Own Musical, a company that created original plays during short residencies. A theme was chosen with a group of students and they shared their own life stories connected to the theme. The company wrote and staged an original one act musical with the students using their stories.
He was a member and then coordinator of the Playwrights Unit of the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans, President of the board of Dog & Pony Theatre and State Director of the International Thespian Society. He is currently a board member of Goat in the Road Productions, a company that produces original devised works and also has an educational program teaching young students (5th grade) to write plays. The company chooses the best works and hires local adult companies to perform them for the students in a year end showcase called Play/Write.