Who is Conor, Anyway?
Hello there!​
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If you've gotten this far, you must be at least a little bit curious about who I am and what I do, and if so, you might be the kind of person willing to read an unnecessarily long blurb about me. So without further ado...
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The thing that has always excited me most about theatre is its power as an engine for empathy. By sitting down in a dark theater space, placing ourselves momentarily in the lives of other people, witnessing their struggles, their desires, their hopes, their fears, we can't help but feel a little more connected to each other than we did when we went in. Throughout my time writing plays, I've always tried to keep this in mind. No matter what form my plays take, empathy and emotional connection are paramount. I don't like telling stories that are bleak for the sake of being bleak; I try to always leave my audience with some glimmer of hope.
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I first got into theatre, as most people probably do, in high school. Despite having performing aspirations since childhood, intense shyness and general lack of self confidence kept me from seeking out opportunities. That changed in 2005 when, bolstered by the confidence I'd gotten from singing and playing guitar, I decided to audition for the spring musical: The Who's Tommy. As both a wannabe actor and classic rock nerd, it was the perfect combination of interests. And lo and behold, I got cast in the ensemble! My shining moment came when I got to sing the first verse of "Pinball Wizard," wearing pleather pants and a mesh tanktop, no less...
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After that, I "caught the bug," as they say, and became heavily involved in theatre for the rest of my time in high school, appearing in shows like A Streetcar Named Desire (Steve) and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Mr. Salt, possibly my crowning achievement in high school). I can say without exaggeration that becoming involved in theatre changed my life; I truly felt I'd found my tribe, and I still do.
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In 2006, as a high school junior, I wrote my first short play. Titled "What Mommies and Daddies Do," it was an extremely timely exploration of 1950s sex education, featuring plenty of jokes about masturbation and terrible analogies for reproduction. As you can imagine, it went over pretty well, and I got my first taste of the electricity that's created when an audience is invested in your work. I can say my sense of humor has (slightly) matured since then, but that feeling has never left me.
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After high school, I had dreams of continuing to pursue performance, and enrolled at Western Michigan University in the fall of 2008 with the hope of auditioning for their theatre department the following year. Sadly, I was not accepted into the program, and thus had to figure out what my options were if I still wanted to pursue this art. I could wait another year and try again, thus likely adding a year to my undergrad, or I could explore other possibilities. I remembered my experience as a playwright, the live wire feeling of seeing my words come alive as bodies on stage, and I decided to give it a shot. I took all the playwriting classes I could, as well as most other writing classes, and continued to learn from my professors, chiefly WMU playwriting professor Steve Feffer, and push myself over the next few years of college. I wrote my first full-length play, Takeoff, in my junior year, something I thought I'd never be able to do. During this time, I also continued performing, appearing in several productions with the Kalamazoo Civic Theatre.
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Takeoff gave me my first (albeit local) taste of success, when it was selected to receive a script-in-hand workshop reading as part of the Theatre Kalamazoo New Playfest, an event bringing together Kalamazoo's surprisingly robust theatre community to develop new works. Mine was the selection of WMU's University Theatre, and I had the privilege of working with some of my very talented peers in the theatre department. Takeoff went on to receive a production from Kalamazoo's Fancy Pants Theater in 2013, which marked the first full production of my work.
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After college, I moved home to Ann Arbor, got involved with a local theatre company as a PA, and continued to submit and occasionally get work produced in my home state. In 2013, a year after graduating, I hit another milestone when my one-act play "Umbrella Story" was selected for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Region III. As one of three playwrights repping for my alma mater at that festival, I felt very honored when the play was chosen as a finalist in the one-act category, something I'm still very proud of.
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While still in Michigan, I self-produced a reading of my play The Painted Staircase at the Ann Arbor Art Center, followed by a reading of another play, With One Little Stone, at the Renegade Theatre Festival in Lansing. Both of these were collaborations with my partner in art and life, Leslie Hull, who served as director. These experiences taught me a lot about what it was like to run my own rehearsal process, and what making theatre feels like out in the "real world."
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In 2014, Leslie and I decided to make the leap from our cozy Michigan environs to the big bad city of Chicago to pursue our twin theatrical aspirations. Since then, I've been lucky enough to have work produced with a number of fantastic Chicago companies, including Dandelion Theatre ("...and I Don't Feel Any Different,"The Coat Check, 2015; "The Best Food on Earth," The Hot Dog Stand, 2016), Public House Theatre ("Umbrella Story," Twelve Ways to Play One-Act Festival, 2015), Thorpedo Productions ("The Matrimony Experiment," Love in 90 Minutes, 2016), Coffee and Whiskey Productions (staged reading of The Letter G, 2017), Williams Street Repertory (staged reading of Miss Expanding Universe, 2018), Theatre Above the Law (24 Hour Adaptation Festival, 2018), Nothing Without a Company ("Safe Keeping," 2nd Annual New World Play Festival, 2019), and Intrinsic Theatre Company (Euphonia, May Play Podcast, 2020).
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Also in 2018, Leslie and I embarked on our maiden voyage under our own name, Typeset Theatre Company. We produced a staged reading of my full-length play Euphonia, and hope to continue to foster new work under the Typeset name in the future. In 2019, we founded the Wayword Writers Collective, a monthly workshop for playwrights to get together and share work in a supportive and low-stakes environment, and we're still going strong today.
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If you got through all that, I commend you, and I hope to keep making it even longer by making more theatre for many more years to come!