John Matthew Riopelle

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BIO

John Matthew Riopelle is an American, actor, playwright, lyricist and screenwriter. He is the winner of the Gilman Gonzalez-Falla Musical Theater Award, a two-time Richard Rodgers and Jonathan Larson Grant finalist and a Fred Ebb Musical Theater Award finalist. His musical, Streets of America, with score by Tony Award Winner, Michael Rupert, was developed at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in conjunction with American University as part of their Inaugural Page to Stage Series on the Millennium Stage. It was further developed in New York City and premiered at the Pittsburgh Playhouse.

Matthew grew up in Detroit, Michigan and studied acting at the Cranbrook Theater School and Actor’s Alliance Theater Conservatory. After lying about his age, he went on to become the youngest pupil of the acclaimed actress and teacher Uta Hagen. He continued his training at Webster University, Wayne State University, The Studio Theater in Washington DC. and later with acting coach Bob Krakower in New York City.

After graduating from the Boston Conservatory of Music with his BFA in Musical Theater, Riopelle moved to New York where he pounded the pavement and finally got his elusive Actor’s Equity card. In between auditions and call-backs, Matthew supported himself as a waiter, a personal trainer and eventually the assistant to cosmetic mogul Bobbi Brown.

The trajectory of Riopelle’s career changed after seeing John Cameron Mitchell in the ground-breaking musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

“As an actor, I was being told I was not enough of this or too much of that. I never seemed to be able to find the right box they wanted me in. After seeing Hedwig, it all made sense. I wanted to do what he was doing. I didn’t want have to wait for someone to give me permission to be creative or tell the stories I wanted to tell.” (Riopelle, Pittsburgh Gazette)

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Shortly after, he embarked on a seven-year collaboration with Tony Award Winner, Michael Rupert on what would later become the musical Streets of America. In the fall of 2003, Matthew met his mentor, playwright, Glyn O’Malley.

“I was newly sober and beaten down. Fucked up, really. As a young writer, I had lost my voice. As a young man, I had lost hope. Glyn got it because he had experienced the same challenges in his collaboration with Edward (Albee). That place where your voice is no longer your own. Glyn helped me discover and define it again find the courage to stand on my own.
(Riopelle, 2018, Edge Media)

After his first meeting in Los Angeles, producer Dan Halsted, (Nixon, The Virgin Suicides and Garden State) hired Riopelle to write Chavez, a biopic chronicling the life of UFW leader Cesar Chavez.

Shortly after, his first television pilot, Left was optioned and developed by Adam Shankman, Offspring Entertainment and Warner Brother’s Television. His second pilot was optioned and developed by Mark Canton (Purple Rain, As Good As It Gets, Goodfellas) and David Hopwood (Den of Thieves, 300 and Power).

In between freelance writing assignments and grad school, Matthew held development, marketing and research positions at A&E, Lifetime Entertainment, the CW Network, Red Bull, Sony Pictures Television and Universal Music Group.

In 2020 producers Claude Del Farra and Brian Keady of BDCF Films, acquired the rights to his feature The Camel Knows the Way, based on Lorna Kelly’s memoir, which they are producing with Ginger Sledge, (Where’d You Go Bernadette?).

His play Immaculate Heart, based on his mother’s true story of life after leaving a cloistered convent in 1968, was produced in April of 2021 by the Blank Theater Company in Los Angeles.

Upcoming projects include the pilot Blind Pig and the feature Sullivan in Cuba.

Riopelle holds an MFA in screenwriting and playwriting from Point Park University and is a recovering Catholic.

PROJECTS

Feature Films

The Camel Knows the Way (optioned)

2021 BDCF Pictures/Ginger Sledge

(Where’d You Go Bernadette?)

Love, Olivia (optioned)

2017 Beachfront Films/Tracey Becker

(Finding Neverland, Hysteria)

Goodbye, Arthur (optioned)

2015 Tilting Windmills Entertainment/Matt Ratner

Chavez (optioned, page one rewrite)

2013 Lily Bright, Dan Halsted, EP

(Nixon, Garden State, The Virgin Suicides)

TV Movies

Zoe, Gone

2014 Lifetime Entertainment

The Good Mother

2013 Lifetime Entertainment

Pilots

Blind Pig

2021

MedWest

2019

Clean (optioned)

2018 Mark Canton/David Hopwood, EP

Left (optioned/set-up)

2017 Warner Horizons/ Offspring Ent.

Broken Doll

2016

Theatre

Immaculate Heart

2021 Blank Theater Company L.A. Reading
2020 New York Reading; 42^nd St. Studios
2017 L.A. Reading; Henry Fonda Theater

Streets of America (book/lyrics)

(Music by Tony Award Winner Michael Rupert)

2011 New York Reading
2008 Pittsburgh Playhouse Premier
2007-2008 Point Park University Workshops

Rancho Cucamonga (book/lyrics)

2007 NYC Workshop; Producers Club

Education

MFA Point Park University, Screenwriting and Playwriting ‘21

BFA Boston Conservatory of Music, Musical Theater/Directing ‘96

Script Anatomy, Margaux Froley, 2014 Present

Pilar Alessandra/Lee Jessup 2013 – 2018

Glynn O’Mally (Edward Albee’s protégé́) 2006 – 2011

Dan O’Brien Playwright 2004–2006

Webster Conservatory (Acting) 1991-1992

Uta Hagen (Acting) 1989-1991

Awards

Richard Rogers Musical Theater Finalist, 2008

Fred Ebb Musical Theater Award Finalist, 2008

Ed Kleban Musical Theater Finalist, 2006

Jonathan Larson Award Finalist, 2004 and 2005

Gilman Gonzalez- Falla Commendation Theater Award, 2002

Son Of A Nun

Upcoming Memoir

Artist Essay

Excerpt from the upcoming memoir "Son Of A Nun"

It was hookup, nothing more, an anonymous exchange of desire that brought us together in a Chelsea Bathhouse on a Monday night. He was Italian or Polish. Definitely blue collar. His gold crucifix gave him away and was enough to convince me he was trustworthy. He smiled, invited me into his room, offered me some coke and within moments we were tangled in each other’s sweaty bodies, holding on like it was the end of the world. He gently put his hand on my heart. “You okay?” I nodded trying to be cool. He smirked, “No you’re not.”

“125th and Riverside,” he told the driver. The Hudson flew by along with fragments of the wreckage I left behind in DC three weeks earlier. Six years of lies suddenly hit me like the rain on the windshield. Twenty-minutes later we were in bed listening to Joni Mitchell.

He was a closeted New York Firefighter who came out at thirty-nine. After complimenting my blue eyes, he asked what I did. “ Writer,” I said. “What do you write about?” “Survival. Identity. The collision of fate and grace.” Who cares if I was making it up? It sounded good. He seemed impressed. I qualified it. “And I work as an assistant at a brokerage firm in the Twin Towers.” We discussed our Catholic upbringings and God. I asked about his gold crucifix. It was his mother’s. He put it around my neck and asked if he could take me on a “real date” the following night. “Sure.” I said. It all felt like a Bruce Springsteen song. “How you feeling?” “Safe,” I said. “Good,” he replied. Then we fell asleep.

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The next morning, the phone rang. It was the station. Something terrible had happened downtown. A plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. What? I froze. Joe turned on the TV and quickly got dressed. That’s when the panic kicked in. What about Karen? What about my boss? I was supposed to be there! Joe grabbed me, “Stay here. Don’t do anything until you hear from me. I’ll be back.” He kissed me and was gone. I sat there for two days waiting for him to come back. He never did.

“Survival. Identity. The collision of fate and grace.” Those words cracked open a piece of my heart I’ve been trying to put back together ever since. Why him and not me? Why did I survive? Was it grace or fate or just an arbitrary hookup? Joe saved me that night. He lives on in the stories I tell and characters I write. Each of them surviving something, holding a piece of this unanswered question. Each waiting, like me, for him to come back so we can finally find an ending to this story.