Photo: David Armstrong
Biography
Julie McKee grew up in New Zealand, is now a citizen of the U.S. and has made her home in New York City. Like many Kiwis she traveled at an early age and during a stay in Madrid met for the first time, artists and people of the theatre (including Pedro Almodovar). It was then she decided to follow suit -- first as a dancer then as an actor. After writing her first play, Ron's Garden, she was accepted into the Yale School of Drama. Since then The Adventures of Amy Bock was chosen for the Sundance Playwrights Lab and later premiered at The Yale Repertory Theatre.
Her plays include Play By Ear, which was produced by the HB Playwrights Foundation (director Pam Berlin), and Free Ascent, which was nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and workshopped by HBPF. Get It While You Can premiered at the Yale Summer Cabaret, and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation of Science and Technology commissioned Fringe Benefits, which appeared in the First Light Festival. Ron's Garden, won the First Annual Directors Project Festival (at Synchronicity Space) and was selected to appear in the New Zealand International Festival of the Arts. Ms. McKee's plays have also been presented at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center's Page to Stage, and Passage Theatre in New Jersey. Upcoming full-length plays include The Sleeper Awakens, recently nominated for the L. Arnold Weissberger Award, and Lola, a musical.
Her short plays include: A Farewell To Mum (OBIE Award Winning EST Marathon); Invitation to a Funeral; A Backward Glance; The 'Far-Flung' (also EST Marathons); Hope; Millennium Madness; Pink and Wild; Jill on a Recliner, Reading; The Sleeper Awakens; Aftermath; The Daffodils; and Haere Mai Ki Aotearoa; and have been produced at such theatres as The Women's Project, Red Earth Ensemble, HB Playwrights Foundation Summer Shorts, Yale Cabaret, as well as regionally and in New Zealand.
Ms. McKee's plays are published by Smith & Kraus and Playscripts, Inc. Awards and fellowships include: An international artist residency at St. James Cavalier Center for Creativity in Malta; The MacDowell Colony; Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; New York Foundation for the Arts; and The Silver Medal for contribution of Theatrical Excellence to the EST Marathon of One Act Plays and the American Theater, awarded by The Ensemble Studio Theatre. She received a Certificate in Drama from the Yale School of Drama MFA playwriting program, where she was the recipient of the Eugene O'Neill Scholarship and the Truman Capote Fellowship. She is also an actress and studied with Uta Hagen at HB Studios for five years. Ms. McKee has worked with the 52nd St. Project in New York, the Greylock Project at Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Dwight/Edgewood Project in New Haven, which are both replicas of the 52nd St. Project. She has taught playwriting at Ohio University; the Actors Center in Sydney, Australia; EST Institute; HB Studios; and was recently a guest speaker at Sweet Briar College. Memberships include: Ensemble Studio Theatre; The BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop (Librettists); HBPF Playwright Unit; The Women's Project Playwright Lab (2002-2004); Dramatists Guild of America; and AEA/AFTRA/SAG.
