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I'm Kevin O'Morrison, Playwright

And I'm happy to announce that my play,
"THE NIGHTGATHERERS",
has been awarded
THE PINTER REVIEW GOLD MEDAL FOR DRAMA

Synopsis:
Four homeless men - three of them veterans of different wars - live in a forgotten tunnel under New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel, and survive by redeeming the cans and bottles they collect from the city's garbage. When they discover the bones of a former tenant in a previously unexplored room off their living quarters, they are faced with a dilemma: the deceased - a veteran of The Gulf War and a bronze star recipient - is entitled to a military burial. Yet making the outside world aware of their presence will cost them their home. There is also the puzzle of divining the dead man's wishes: in his effects they find written across his Bronze Star citation, a prayer that repudiates the war in which he won that medal. In their struggle to arrive at a solution that grants justice to the deceased and to themselves, they find a kind of salvation.

One set. 4 men: Ages: 27, 54, 70, 86

EARLIER HONORS:

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS
Playwright Fellowship
CAPS (NY State)Playwright Fellowship
First Prize, National Repertory Theatre
Two plays chosen for The O'Neill Playwrights Conference.

"HELEN OF TROY TELLS WHAT REALLY HAPPENED"

When Helen of Troy materializes in a modern theatre, she is as surprised as the audience she now confronts, for she has been an immortal prisoner on the Isle of the Blesséd for the past 3000 years. Once she gets her bearings – which includes discovering in what language to address her auditors – she seizes her opportunity to set the record straight about what really happened during her time on earth, making a case that contradicts much of what the mythmakers have accused her.

"Helen" is a one-woman play that should run about 90 minutes plus an intermission, and the play contains a convention that permits an actress of any age to play her.

To Read a Sample Chapter of "Helen of Troy Tells What Really Happened" Click Here

"THE MUTILATORS"

A terrorist act against the citizens of the most powerful nation on earth sends them into such a frenzy of fear that they surrender their powers to a demagogue, who then uses those powers to lay waste to them and their institutions.

Time: 415 B.C.
Place: Athens
(The play is done in modern dress. Large Cast, all males)

"SONGS IN A STRANGE LAND"

When Sophie Clery, an Army Nurse, is furloughed back to the States from the Vietnam War, her Greenwich Village flat becomes the crucible where her inchoate feelings about the Vietnam War lead her to become a world class artist. In this process, she and her flat become the center for other vets, who learn how to keep faith with each other in a world that is not keeping faith with them.
(4 women, 4 men - early 20s)

REVIEW EXCERPTS FOR OLDER PLAYS

"Carrie Morgan from the Ozark Mountains in Missouri, looked remarkably like an American Mother Courage, and behaved like Brecht's heroine, right down to the last shattering scene --- where the bodies of her son and grandson are ready to be mourned"

This excerpt from J.J. Finnegan's Review of "THE MORGAN YARD's" Curtain scene when the play opened The Dublin Theatre Festival in 1974, is as apropos today as it was then. Don't take my word for it.
Read her Curtain speech in the Morgan Burying Yard.

CARRIE: Lord - in this familiar place that I have knowed an loved since I can remember - this dear place that has allus been a holdin twixt us an you - I'm cryin out, I'm lost. Our young is dead all around us, Lord...an we're standin amongst 'em. That wasn't the way it was planned. But that's the way it is - (she listens to the echo of her words) - That wasn't the way it was planned. But that's the way it is.

Clive Barnes, The New York Times

"Kevin O'Morrison's "LADYHOUSE BLUES" at times has the haunting quality of Chekhov."

Harold Clurman, The Nation

"Rarely has a man written so perceptive a play about a group of women."

Emory Lewis, The Bergen Record

"... a playwright of many moods ... DARK AGES is science fiction with a heart."

Updated 12/22/07

FOR PERFORMANCE RIGHTS to "LADYHOUSE BLUES" and "A PARTY FOR LOVERS":
Biff Liff at William Morris, ( bl@wma.com )
1325 Ave. of Americas, NY, NY 10019
Ph:212-586-5100

FOR PERFORMANCE RIGHTS to all my other plays:
DAN WRIGHT ( DANWRIGHTLIT@aol.com )
ANN WRIGHT REPRESENTATIVES
165 W. 46TH ST. SUITE 1165
NY, NY 10036
Ph: 212-784-6770

TV & FILM SCRIPTS

"POMPEII...Where Ghosts Walk"

1 hour TV Film Documentary.

"A PARTY FOR LOVERS"

Screen Adaption of my Prize Winning Play of same title.

"HONEY"

Screen Adaptation of my Novel of the same title.

My E-mail

THREE NOVELS:

THE DEAD FILE
reveals the Showbusiness Blacklist
as the normalizing of an evil;
a business run for profit,
where the very men who did the Blacklisting
would "clear" their victims --- for a fee.

Review of THE DEAD FILE as it appears on Amazon.com:
Reviewer: Midwest Book Review from Oregon, WI USA

Set in 1950's America, The Dead File is a novel by Kevin O'Morrison about the infamous TV blacklist during the equally infamous era of Joe McCarthy and the congressional HUAC investigations, and how it permanently changed one actor's life. Insightful, sometimes sad, yet a powerfully charged saga of the struggle to find meaning and dictate one's own existence when the telephones stop ringing with offers and no one will tell you why -- The Dead File is highly recommended reading and as contemporary as the recently past "American Patriots" act of congress.

To Read a Sample Chapter of "The Dead File" Click Here

To Buy "The Dead File", Click Here

THE PASSION OF BRIAN LOFTUS
gives a fractured view of the 20th Century,
seen through the dying mind of a man
who has been a Consultant to every President from Roosevelt to Clinton.

A Barnes & Noble.com Reader gave it the following Review:

5 STARS - Best I've Read This Year!
Phillip Elliott, history buff

To Read a Sample Chapter of "The Passion of Brian Loftus" Click Here

To Buy it, Click here.

HONEY
a modern fairy story
got this Review fromBarnes and Noble Reader:

GO, HONEY! (5 STARS)
Amy Kelly, Romance lover

To Read a Sample Chapter of "Honey" Click Here

To Buy "Honey", Click Here

There are links to the synopses of all three novels at the bottom of this page, plus links to other works, to a few acting credits, and to a short catalog of song lyrics I've written for several composers.

Actors will find links to several pages of free Audition Monologs. (Note: As a kindness to both the Actor and those for whom the Actor is Auditioning, they are shorter than Performance Monologs)

Take your time browsing, and don't forget to sign my Guest Book...