Home Reviews Glamour Contact us Who we are Read the plays
			John O’Keefe
		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. 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. 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. John O'Keefe was co-founder of the Blake Street Hawkeyes, a performance lab ensemble based in Berkeley, California. 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 the Shimmer. He performed his one-man show The Promotion at Lincoln Center in 1991. In the 1990's, John O'Keefe's acting talents have been featured in numerous productions and motion pictures. In 1992 he was a screenwriting fellow at Sundance Film Institue. 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 iin 1999. It was nominated for Best Playwrighting by the San Francisco Drama Critic's Circle. Glamour (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 April 9th 2002, Kathrine Owens, director. Times Like These, the second in his "Occupaion Drama" opened in Los Angles at 2100 Square Feet in Oct. 2002, moved to the Oddssey Theatre in January for a combined seven and a half month run, director, John O'Keefe. It won the Los Angeles Drama Critic's Circle Award for Playwriting for 2002 and the LA Weekly Award for best playwriting and best lead in a male and female role and the Top 10 productions in the LA Times. The third play in the Occupation Drama series, Spook, opened January 25, 2003 at Cinnabar in Petaluma and is currently adapted as a screenplay. O'Keefe is currently commissioned by Cinnabar Theater for a play in 2004. In October he participated in the Mark Taper Forum's New Plays Series with Glamour. Times Like These was performed at the New Theatre in Miami in December of 2003. A production of Spook is projected next Spring at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angles.