Dominic Orlando, the prolific writer known first for his Off Broadway and regional theater productions and later for his work in television, died on November 17th due to complications from cancer at the age of 57. His family announced his death today along with talent agency CAA.
Orlando began his career in the Brooklyn theater scene in the 1990s before relocating to Minneapolis, where he worked under the Jerome and McKnight Fellowships at the Playwrights’ Center. At the same time, he co-founded the theater company the Workhaus Collective, where he wrote and directed the plays A Short Play About Globalization (2007), The Sense of What Should Be (2009), and A Short Play About 9/11 (2011).
In the last decade, Orlando pivoted from theater to television, writing for series like Them, The OA, Mindhunter, and Nightflyers. In 2016, he was nominated for a WGA Award for his work on The OA episode “Mirror Mirror.” Last year, he was nominated again for his work on Mindhunter. According to his family, the writer also contributed to the upcoming Amazon series Outer Range and FX’s upcoming show Retreat.
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“Mere hours before he passed, he sat down at the dining room table to dive headlong into the first day of a writers room for a TV show,” Orlando’s family shared in a statement. “He went out the way he lived doing what he loved, full of the passion he always possessed for our human ability to reach each other through language and story.”
Orlando is survived by his mother, Lillian, his brothers John and Steven, and his extended family.
