CHRISTIAN SCHEIDER graduated from Bard College in 2012 with a degree in philosophy. There, he served for three years inside maximum security prisons as a writing tutor with the Bard Prison Initiative – the pioneering program which offers B.A. and A.A. degrees to inmates. At Bard, Scheider studied film with Peter Hutton and Kelly Reichardt, and performed extensively in theatrical productions under former artistic director of the Public Theater JoAnne Akalaitis. After graduating, Scheider studied at the Stella Adler conservatory and worked for years as a professional actor.

For film, Scheider co-starred with Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche in the feature film Words And Pictures directed by Fred Schepisi, which was released theatrically worldwide in 2014. On television, Scheider guest starred on ABC’s series Forever starring Ioan Gruffudd. Scheider’s theatrical credits include Ken in the two-man play RED by John Logan at Guild Hall opposite Victor Slezak as Mark Rothko, and Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been… by Eric Bently with James Earl Jones and Matthew Broderick.

As a writer, Scheider developed multiple original television series, and worked as an assistant for comedian Alan Zweibel and screenwriters Bill Collage and Adam Cooper, among others. In his writing for theater, Scheider has primary worked on adaptations of American literature for the stage. In 2013, together with frequent collaborator Tucker Marder and with the endorsement from the late author’s estate, Scheider co-adapted Ray Bradbury’s prophetic nine page dystopian short story about technology The Murderer into a full-length stage play. Following the success of this sold-out production in 2014, Scheider was commissioned by the Parrish Art Museum to adapt Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Galapagos, again with endorsement from the author's estate. This production featured a three-story set, a live orchestra, puppets, projection-mapped video and a twenty-six person cast including Oscar-nominee Bob Balaban. In 2017, Scheider, Marder and Isla Hansen were commissioned by Guild Hall Center For The Visual And Performing Arts to premiere their original experimental slapstick satire The Summit about a not-so-fictional global elite preparing to abandon their bodies and upload their minds into the virtual beyond.

Scheider’s film work includes The Sunny Center, a documentary about the the first-of-it’s kind refuge and rehabilitation center for people who have suffered wrongful incarceration and ignoble exoneration. The film tells the impossible love story of exonorees Sonia ‘Sunny’ Jacobs and Peter Pringle; how they survived the death penalty, met on the outside and fell in love and wed. Today, Sunny and Peter welcome other exonorees in their home in rural Ireland, and help them attempt to reintegrate back into society. The Tree Prophet is a documentary about the infamous, self-identified tree prophet David Milarch, chronicling his moonshot mission to negate the effects of climate change by re-populating the world’s decimated old-growth forests with “Champion Trees.” The Tree Prophet premiered at the Santa Monica Film Festival and won the Audience Award at the San Fransisco Independent Film Festival. Animal Party is a comedic feature film about human-animal rituals all over the world. In quixotic and perpetual pre-production,  Scheider and Marder’s original screenplay for Animal Party was honored by the Redford Center as part of their 2016 grants program. Currently, Scheider is developing Pullman, an original limited series about the rise of infamous railroad sleeping-car magnate George M. Pullman and the epochal national labor uprising in 1894. The strike first shut down Pullman works on the south side of Chicago, and then the entire economy of the United States. The little known true story follows the lives of the doomed strikers at the factory town, a utopian paradise made in the Pullman corporate image, through to the Supreme Court trail against the worker’s young, unionist organizer Eugene Debs, as defended by the unproven attorney-for-the-damned, Clarence Darrow.

Scheider’s production company ekstasis.media collaborates with humanitarians, artists and organizations to envision more humane forms of society. Ekstasis has worked with the Bard Prison Initiative to chronicle the first program of it’s kind to offer true liberal arts education behind bars, and has broadcast live, multi-day conferences for Blue Meridian Partners, one of America’s leading philanthropies working toward scalable strategies to address economic disparities and end childhood poverty in the US. At the local level, Scheider has presented free public programming at libraries. His film programs included: Visions of Utopia: Idealized Pictures of the World, Plays on Film, The Claustrophobia of Wealth, Precocious Cinema: Children’s Films for Adults, The Fourth Branch: Journalism and Democracy, Life On The American Moral Margin: Kevorkian, Scopes, Kinsey, Poncelet, Alan Lomax: Video Archives, and A Holiday with Tati. His listening series included: The Female Masters of Jazz: Hunter, Smith, Waters, Williams, Armstrong, Alone at the Piano: Landmark Solo Recordings, Songs Of The Voiceless: America’s Folk Musicians, and The Life of Jazz: Morton, Armstrong, Tatum, Ellington. Playwriting workshop programs included Great American Playwrights: Odets, Wilder, Williams, Inge, and Stella Adler: Teacher As Critic.

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