My Grudges Co-playwright is Joe Queenan: How Lucky am I?
Yes, for three plays now including our upcoming Zoom production, Grudges — tix available here, Joe Queenan has been my insightful, sometimes sarcastic, always urging me to cut more lines, ever-faithful writing partner. Perhaps you know him. The BBC describes him as an “American satirist”. The Guardian calls Joe Queenan “a cultural critic and movie reviewer”. The Wall Street Journal tags him as their Moving Targets columnist. And there are many other labels thrown at Joe over the years; some of them especially from the targets of his wit are too offensive to repeat on LinkedIn. However, few people know that playwrighting and the theater were Joe’s first love.
When he graduated from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia in 1972, he earned a fellowship to study in France. Supporting himself in Paris through a series of odd jobs, Joe managed night after night to be in the Comedie Francaise cheap seats, the section that the French whimsically call “le paradis” but Yanks refer to as the nosebleed section. Life on his return to the states veered in a different direction, one that had him author ten books, including If You’re Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble and Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon. His 2009 memoir Closing Time was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. A frequent contributor to BBC Radio, his work there included Look Back in Armour, A Brief History of Irony, and Hitler’s Favourite Cowboy. He also made three short films for Britain’s Channel 4: Mickey Rourke for a Day, My Fair Hugh, and So You Wanna Be a Gangster.
He wrote, directed and starred in the financially ruinous 1994 low-budget film Twelve Steps to Death. Besides his current gig at the WSJ, his writing appeared regularly over the years in the New York Times, Barron’s, GQ, The Guardian and innumerable other periodicals. And then in May of 2019, he returned to that first love of theater with a play, Alms, co-authored with me, which enjoyed a sold out Off Broadway Equity Showcase production. Now with Grudges and several new plays in development, Joe not only returns to that first love of the stage, but also during this pandemic boosts the #maketheaterlive initiative to provide actors, directors, and technical personnel chances to showcase their talent and even gain some compensation despite the fact that theaters in the USA are likely to remain dark for at least another eight months. To see our latest work that connects to his early passion as a writer, just go to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/grudges-live-stream-biting-new-comedy-by-joe-queenan-tj-elliott-tickets-110684496308
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
