Willie Reale is a playwright, lyricist, producer and screenwriter. He is also the Co-Founder (with his brother Tom Reale) of Postmodern Media which offers Feral Fiction, an AI powered, interactive narrative platform with persistent state, adaptive language modeling. The platform has applications across education, entertainment and business. 

He worked for over twenty years in scripted television, and has won three Emmys for his efforts.

In film, he was nominated for and an Academy Award for the song “Patience” (music Henry Krieger) from the movie “Dreamgirls.” He wrote the song “No Dames” for Channing Tatum in the Coen Brothers’ Hail Caesar.

In theater, he co-wrote A Year With Frog and Toad with another brother, Robert Reale. The show was performed on Broadway and Willie was nominated for two Tony Awards for book and lyrics. It is one of the most produced family musicals worldwide. He has just completed another original musical, again with his brother Robert called “Our Mother the Musical” a biographical piece depicting their rather hilarious Sicilian lesbian mother.

In 1981, Reale founded The 52nd Street Project, an organization that brings inner-city children together with professional theater artists. He served as the theater’s artistic director for 18 years. For the Project’s kids, he has written over fifty plays and the lyrics to hundreds of songs. The 52nd Street Project’s programs are currently being replicated at sites across the country, in London and in Madagascar. In June of 1994, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of this work. The 52nd Street Project is now in its 45th year.