Background
Thompson, Donald Raymond was born on October 19, 1956 in Long Beach, California, United States. Son of Norman Allen and Margie Ann Thompson.
Thompson, Donald Raymond was born on October 19, 1956 in Long Beach, California, United States. Son of Norman Allen and Margie Ann Thompson.
Thompson attended University of California, Los Angeles Film School, and was mentored by Richard Walter, Chair of University of California, Los Angeles’s screenwriting program
He is most notable for the film Clouds, the Sundance and Cinema for Peace award-winning documentary Tibet in Song, and the plays Los Angeles Book of the Dead, Tibet Does Not Exist and Democracy: A Work in Progress. Education and While at University of California, Los Angeles, Thompson developed a full-length screen play that was a finalist in the Samuel Goldwyn screenwriting awards. Playwriting Thompson’s first major creative success was the anti-war play Los Angeles Book of the Dead which was first performed at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Los Angeles, in 1982 (director Renee Tadlock).
Los Angeles Book of the Dead was revived in 1987 by the Rough Theater Company, and continued to be performed as a reader’s theater piece throughout the 1990s.
In 1995, his play Tibet Does Not Exist was first performed at the Gene Frankel theater in New York City and later, Office-Broadway (1997) by the Theater for Human Rights. The play was also performed at Oregon Stage Works in 2005 and revived at Nicu’s Spoon Theater in New York City in 2009.
The play was published in paperback in 1998 with a foreword by Robert Thurman and the Dalai Lama. Thompson has also developed two plays through the Maryland Ensemble Theater, Democracy: A Work in Progress (2004) and The God of this World (2014).
Filmmaking and Producing William Arntz was a producer on the project, and also a co-producer of Thompson’s play, Tibet Does Not Exist.
Notable of the nextPix projects is the Sundance award-winning documentary Tibet in Song, directed by former political prisoner of conscience Ngawang Choephel. Thompson was a producer on the film.
Member of Indiana Feature Project.
Married Diana Misa Takata, June 24, 1984.