Born in Waterloo, Iowa in 1940, O'Keefe was raised in Catholic orphanages and state juvenile homes throughout the American Midwest. He began singing in church choirs at the age of five and pursued his musical interests, subsequently receiving a vocal scholarship at the University of Iowa, where he earned a BA degree in Philosophy and an MFA in Theater.
He has performed his solo work in Europe and the United States including the Second Stage in New York, Lincoln Center, and the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. He participated in the Mark Taper Forum's New Plays Series and the Director’s Workshop at Lincoln Center. He was writer in residence at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco.
O'Keefe became involved with laboratory theater as a writer and performer with the Center for New Performing Arts. He continued his experimental work with the Iowa Theatre Lab.
John O'Keefe was co-founder of the Blake Street Hawkeyes, a performance lab ensemble based in Berkeley, California.
1970s, 1980s
His affiliation with the Magic Theater in San Francisco began with their 1972 production of his play Chamber Piece and the 1973 production of Jimmy Beam and continues to this day, including six full productions, with two more currently in the works. Among these, All Night Long won the full round of Bay Area Critics Awards, Ghosts (San Francisco Chronicle Critic’s Choice), and Bercilak’s Dream (Bay Guardian Top Ten.) All directed by O’Keefe.
Ghosts ran in Los Angles for five months winning three Dramalogue Awards including best play, and an LA Weekly Award for best directing.
O'Keefe was one of five writers chosen for a residency at Sundance Film Institute in 1989. His work Shimmer toured throughout the Untied States and Europe and was then produced as a feature film by American Playhouse and broadcast nationally. He won the New York Bessie Award for Shimmer.
He performed his one-man show The Promotion at Lincoln Center in 1991.
1990s
In the 1990s, John O'Keefe's acting talents were featured in numerous productions and motion pictures. In 1992 he was a screenwriting fellow at Sundance Film Institute. He was artist-in-residence at the University of Iowa in 1994, where his play The Flowers of Fancy premiered, marking the first production in O'Keefe's Brontë series. O'Keefe with his film adaptation of The Flowers of Fancy represented the United States at Sundance Institute's European affiliate, the Equinoxe Film Institute in Bordeaux, France in 1995.
The Deatherians, O'Keefe's musical about sex and euthanasia in Amsterdam had its world premier at the Undermain Theater in 1996, sweeping the Critics awards in Dallas that year. In the Spring of 1997, The Brontë Cycle was performed at the Clarence Brown Theater, Knoxville, Tennessee where he was artist in residence.
In 1998, John O'Keefe returned to the Magic Theater in San Francisco with his award winning Shimmer. He received the PEW Residency grant with the Magic Theater and the Undermain Theater, which extended to the year 2000. Brontë was read at the Lincoln Center Director's Workshop in May of 1999. The Magic Theater of San Francisco presented Brontë in 1999. It was nominated for Best Playwriting by the San Francisco Drama Critics Circle.
2000 - Present
Glamour, first play in the Occupation Drama series (a play featuring Robert Graves) opened March 15, 2001 at the Cinnabar Theater, John O'Keefe, director. Glamour won a citation for best play by National Critics Association and ran at the Ohio Theatre in New York on April 9th, 2002, Kathrine Owens, director. Times Like These, the second in his Occupation Drama opened in Los Angeles at 2100 Square Feet in Oct. 2002, moved to the Odyssey Theatre in January for a combined seven-and-a-half month run, director, John O'Keefe. It won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Playwriting for 2002 and the LA Weekly Award for best playwriting and best lead in a male and female roles and was a Top 10 production in the LA Times. The third play in the Occupation Drama series, Spook, opened January 25, 2003 at Cinnabar in Petaluma and has been adapted as a screenplay.
In 2000, Subterranean Shakespeare produced Mimzabim at the Climate Theatre in San Francisco.
O’Keefe was awarded a Gerbode Foundation grant to write a libretto for the Berkeley Opera for 2004 and a NEA/TCG Residency Grant with the Odyssey Theatre of Los Angeles for 2004/05. His play Reapers was performed at the Odyssey in 2006. He is the librettist for a new opera, Chrysalis, which opened at the Berkeley Opera in April 2006. Also in 2006, he appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as solo performer with an adaptation of the Kalevala. In 2007, he performed his The Sunshine’s A Glorious Bird and his adaptation of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself at the Public Theater in New York. In 2007 he won Bay Area Critics Award for outstanding solo performance in his adaptation of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, performed at the Marsh Theater, San Francisco. 2008/9.
Recent works includeSay Emily, a new play commissioned by Subterranean Shakespeare Company in San Francisco, and Mystical Abyss commissioned in 2009 by Yugen Theater Company for Asian Tour.
Disgrace will receive a production by Blank Line Collective in Chicago beginning September, 2010.
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