Dave Hunsaker

Dave Hunsaker is an Alaskan screenwriter and playwright based in Juneau, Alaska, and Venice, California. As a screenwriter, he has written for directors Robert Redford, Norman Jewison, Julie Taymor, Stanley Donen, Carroll Ballard, Guillermo del Toro, Mel Gibson, the late Tony Scott, and Roger Donaldson, among others. He has also worked with actors Mel Gibson and Leonardo DiCaprio. He has written for Fox 2000, Fox Searchlight, Sony, Warner Bros, Disney, and HBO. For ten years he was Artistic Director of the Juneau-based Naa Kahidi Theatre, an international touring company of Native Alaskan artists. His play “Yup’ik Antigone” had a sold-out run in New York and twice represented the USA at festivals in Europe. He has written four plays for the New York-based Mettawee River Company, and has had numerous pieces staged at LaMaMa ETC, as well as other theatres in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and elsewhere. He is the librettist and director of the Orpheus Project’s opera, The Princess Sophia, which debuted in 2018. He is a recipient of the Alaska Governor’s Award for the Arts and a Fellowship for the Arts in New York. He received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Alaska in May, 2014. He is a Fellow of the Sundance Institute, a member of the Writers Guild of America and is an adopted member of the Lukaaxadi Clan of the Tlingit Nation.