Theatre As an actor in Chicago's off-Loop theatre movement in the 1970s, Therriault was nominated for a 1977
Jeff Award for Best Actor in a Principal Role for ''Who's Happy Now?'' at the Body Politic Theatre. He portrayed
Mercutio in the
Oak Park Festival Theatre's open-air production of
Romeo and Juliet in 1977, and did seasons at the
Alley Theatre in
Houston, Texas, in 1976–77, and at the
Milwaukee Repertory Theater in 1977–78. After relocating to New York City, he performed in
The Mad Dog Blues at Shep in Rep Rock N' Roll Theatre in 1979. Around 1980, Therriault started writing. The play depicts domineering electrician Rip, who manipulates the lives of his girlfriend Brandy and manic-depressive apprentice Stan. Its off-Broadway run at St. Clements in Manhattan in 1981 The play was also produced by
The Actors' Gang at Second Stage in Los Angeles in 1986 and 1989, directed by Richard Olivier and produced by
Tim Robbins and
Meg Ryan. Other productions include the Cast Theatre in Los Angeles starring
LeVar Burton in 1983, Minnesota in 1986, the
Edinburgh Festival in Scotland in 1989, and Red Bones Theatre in Chicago in 1991. His second full-length play,
The White Death, premiered at Kawaiahao Hall Theatre in Hawaii in 1986, It was performed in 1989 as one of four one-act plays in the Working Theatre's ''Working One-Acts '89'' at the Henry Street Settlement Arts for Living Center in New York City. Revolving around four laborers in a Manhattan warehouse, the play is concerned with "how men deal with their hunger for women." Therriault is an alumnus of
New Dramatists, and received a 1991
McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowship and residency at the
Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis.
Radio Therriault's 1992 radio play
The Hitch, "a darkly comic road adventure," was chosen to initiate Marjorie Van Halteren's new Radio Stage series on
WNYC. It is a re-telling of an autobiographical event where Therriault was hitchhiking with a female friend, and a driver tried to kill him and rape her. In 2002, it was translated and broadcast on the German public-broadcasting radio station
Westdeutscher Rundfunk. His radio play
Romance Concerto, about a concert violinist haunted by the memory of lost love, was performed on WNYC in April 1995.
Television Therriault wrote the script for the 1997
HBO film
First Time Felon, starring
Omar Epps and
Delroy Lindo, and directed by
Charles S. Dutton. It tells the story of a young African-American's trials as a first-time convict.
Witness Protection was nominated for a
Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film, and Sizemore was nominated for a
Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film. ==Personal life==