Gravity

My short play “Gravity,” featured in the NYU New Writers Showcase last spring, is now available to watch online. Victor Williams and Nikiya Mathis did a pretty amazing job, so I encourage you all to watch it here.

STRAY October 14-November 22

All is going well on the STRAY front. Performances begin next Wednesday, October 14, at the Black Dahlia Theatre. For tickets and more info visit www.chalkrep.com or www.thedahlia.com.

And finally, a production!

For the past week or so I’ve been busy with the casting process for my play STRAY, which, after several years and many many developmental readings and workshops (for which I am eternally grateful!), is finally going into production this fall!

The production will be a joint effort between the Black Dahlia Theatre, where I am Literary Manager, and my new company Chalk Rep. Chalk has been producing up a storm this year. This will be our fourth production since the launch last December. All three shows so far have had great audience and critical response, and have done so without breaking the bank. Now we’re just crossing our fingers for a fourth.

We go into rehearsals in a few weeks, and start performances October 14, running Thurs-Sun until November 22nd. This will amazingly be the longest run I’ve ever had for a show to date. But with a 30-seat house, we kind of need it.

Stay tuned for info on the cast and where to buy tickets!

Immigrant Heritage Week

Next week is Immigrant Heritage Week around New York City! How do I know this? Because as a part of the celebrations, Abingdon Theatre will be producing a reading of my play STRAY.

STRAY deals with a white couple who return from Africa with a traumatized adopted son, and attempt to find a place for him in the public school system. Although the play doesn’t deal directly with immigration (for that, see my play 500 Words), several of the characters are immigrants, dealing with the alienation and culture shock that comes with transplanting to a new country.  And then of course there is the oft-forgotten fact that I, too, am an immigrant (naturalized for three years now). There’s a joke about that in the play, for those who are paying attention.

So if you happen to be in NY and trying to figure out how to celebrate your immigrant heritage, please come out and hear the play! Director Josh Hecht has put together an awesome cast, so it should be a great read.

7PM.  Monday, April 20 

Abingdon Theatre, 312 W 36th Street, 1st Floor

FREE! No reservations required

Runner-Up

 I was psyched to find out this morning that my play Hell Money is a runner up for this year’s Yale Drama Series Award. What does this mean? Well, basically that I didn’t win a $10, 000 prize or publication by Yale University Press, but that this year’s judge, David Hare, liked my weird little comedy enough to give it a mention. Hell Money is truly proving to be the scrappy little play that could. 

And the winning play, Lidless by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, sounds really awesome. You can read more about it here: Frances_YaChu_Cowhig_Wins_Yale_Drama_Series_Award_20090316

OMG, I can’t believe David Hare liked my play!

Showcase Showdown

I’m in recovery today from the NYU New Writers Showcase, which went off swimmingly last night in Los Angeles. The 10-minute play showcase was written, directed, produced, performed, and even funded by Tisch School of the Arts alumni living in LA. It was, as you may imagine, a ton of work. But by the time the show came down at 9:30 PM it was clear, at least to us writers,  that it had been totally worth it.

I couldn’t be more grateful to all of the amazing amazing people who came out and volunteered their time to make our plays happen. It’s just one of those situations where it feels like “thank you” isn’t enough, so you find yourself saying it over and over and over again. So many people went so far above and beyond, I know I must have missed a person or two.

So, in case you’re one of those people – Thank You!

And my 10-min play Gravity went very well, too!  If you feel like reading it, it can be downloaded as a PDF from the plays page. (and don’t be confused if the title page says Push – I just changed it)

Cultural Conversations

I’m writing from the Super 8 Motel in State College, Pennsylvania, where I’m in town for a week, workshopping my play Stray with undergraduates at Penn State!  http://www.culturalconversations.org/

I just flew in this evening, after sharing an uneventful day-long journey with a British robot salesman/amateur stunt pilot, and caught the second half of a run-through of the play. The students have already been working on the play for a few weeks, and their script work definitely shows through! Now I’m just going to have to sit back and watch…and maybe do a little tightening here and there. In the meantime, I’m planning to use my time in rural Pennsylvania as a well-needed writing retreat.

Retreat from what, you ask? Well, mostly this: www.chalkrep.com

But also the upcoming NYU New Writers Showcase. More on that later.

Full Disclosure

Rehearsals have been going along swimmingly for the one-person show that I mentioned a few posts back, and my actress Amy Ellenberger and I are getting ready to take the show on the road!

Full Disclosure is a brand new piece that has in some ways been brewing for a long time. Back in 2006 I had this idea to write a play about a real estate agent in Los Angeles who was selling a life that she couldn’t afford to buy. The idea was that she would sell a house to a couple whose marriage was on the rocks, and insinuate herself into their relationship, causing their eventual demise. I had a great opening scene with Sunny, the real estate agent, and then about eighty pages of other scenes that I eventually realized weren’t really going anywhere. So a scrapped the entire thing and wrote Stray.

Then this past summer I was thinking I should write something for Amy – because she is an awesome actress and I knew she’d bring a ton of energy to whatever project I wrote for her. As I was thinking about what would be good for Amy, Sunny resurfaced in my mind, reminding me that I never finished telling her story.  And I realized that the problem with the earlier incarnation of the play was not the story itself, but the point of view. Sunny is by far the most interesting and empathetic of the characters, but when I wrote it as a multi-character play, it inevitably became about the couple. So I decided to start again, stripping away the other characters, and just letting Sunny tell her story.

And tell it she does! Amy is already nearly off-book for the 28 pages of text, and we’ve blocked most of the show in my living room. At the end of next week we’ll fly to New York, where our awesome director Valentina Fratti is going to whip us into shape for performance at the West End Theatre, December 8 and 9. I think it’s going to be a great show and hope that many of you will be able to come see it! For tickets and more info visit www.sixfigures.com

Plays I Wish I Could See

There is suddenly a glut of amazing theatre going on around Los Angeles, and I’m frustrated by the knowledge that I’m not going to make it to all of it. While I’m tempted to just run out and gorge myself on it all, I know that even at my most organized, there’s no way I will make it to everything I want to see before it closes. So instead I will post my good intentions here, and maybe, if I don’t make it to all of these, someone out there will be inspired to go in my stead.

Here’s my list! (in alphabetical order):

By the Waters of Babylon – Geffen Playhouse. A two-hander by Robert Schenkkan. I have embarrassingly never made it to the Geffen in two and a half years in LA, but really hope to make it to this.

For All Time – Cornerstone Theatre Company. A play about the criminal justice system, created in collaboration with people in that community. This is totally up my alley, but closes this weekend, so I’m not sure I’ll make it.

Gem of The Ocean – Fountain Theatre. I saw their production of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone when I first arrived in LA and thought they handled August Wilson really well. This could be good.

The Joy Luck Club – East West Players. This is featuring my good friend Jennifer Chang, and while the play itself is not one I would normally run out to see, EWP always does quality work.

Salvage – Native Voices at the Autry. Diane Glancy is one of the playwrights in the Upstart Crow project. I hear great things and would love to get to know her work.

School of Night – Center Theatre Group. No personal connection here, just sounds awesome. A thriller about Christopher Marlowe.

The Sequence – Theatre@Boston Court. I don’t know much about the writer, but Boston Court is a director’s theatre and the productions are always high-quality and interesting, even when I don’t love the play.

Song of Extinction – Moving Arts (inside at the Ford). I’ve been seeing EM Lewis’s name pop up all over the place for a while now, and have not yet managed to get out to see her work. I’d really like to catch this one.

Spring Awakening – Center Theatre Group. This was the big musical of two seasons ago and I still haven’t seen it. Is it too late? 

Phew. I guess that’s not too bad. And maybe putting it out there like this will help me create room to see them all. In the meantime, what have I been watching? Last weekend I made it to US Drag at Furious Theatre Company, and to Quixotic, written by former Young Playwright Kit Steinkellner. Both are recommended, as well as Susan Johnston’s How Cissy Grew at the El Portal – closing this weekend.

Hope you make it to the theatre, too! And if you’re put off by ticket prices, all of these plays except for Spring Awakening have half-price tickets available  here: www.lastagealliance.com

Grad Made Good

This weekend, my amazing father Neill McKee is being feted by his alma mater, Florida State University as a Grad Made Good. My dad went to FSU for his masters in his early 40s, dragging his family south for a year where he studied like crazy and spent hours locked away in his bedroom, typing away on our brand new Tandy computer, managing to get all of his coursework done and his thesis written in one year, because that’s the length of sabbatical he had. For my mother it was one of the most productive years of her life artistically, and my brother and I had a great time too – making friends quickly and navigating our way through the strange world of the American South.

Little did we know it was the beginning of a much larger adventure for our family. With his Masters of Science from FSU’s School of Communication in hand, my father was able to give new direction to his career, and apply for jobs overseas, first taking a job with Unicef in Bangladesh, and then moving on to Unicef’s regional office in Kenya. His final posting with Unicef was in Uganda, after which he left to work for Johns Hopkins University, spending three years in Baltimore before heading off for a three-year stint in Moscow, from which my parents recently returned. 

It’s a long way to go from Tallahassee – and an even longer distance if you look at where my father came from to start with: the tiny little town of Elmira, Ontario, where no one was expected to move farther away than Toronto. And yet there will be this weekend,  watching the Seminoles Game from the President’s box, sitting on a float in the homecoming parade, this man who carries his home with him wherever he goes.

And what is he going to do with his laurels, now that he has them? Certainly not rest. He’s celebrating the start of his 64th year with a new job at the  Academy for Educational Development in Washington, DC, an organization he’s hoping to contribute to for many years to come.

Congratulations, Dad! I am so proud of you and everything you’ve accomplished.