Kerry Muir

PUBLICATIONS

Published in a bilingual English-Spanish editoin by NoPassport Press as part of their “Dreaming the Americas” series, curated by Caridad Svitch. Purchase the play here 

SPANISH TRANSLATION by Ercilia Sahores

 AWARDS

Winner, 2012 Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition

(originally titled "Cut-Ups") 

 REVIEWS

"Kerry Muir accomplishes wondrous theatrical alchemy, melding Latin American magical realism with the iconography of old Hollywood to create a moving experience that is both fantastic and phantasmic."

-- W. Blake Herron, Screenwriter, The Bourne Identity, Screenwriter/Director, A Texas Funeral 

"A short surrealistic play by Mexico-based playwright Kerry Muir about personal loss and the power of the imagination ... bouncy and moody, hungry and hostile, dreamy and daffy all at once..." -- Ted Hadley, Buffalo News

“The Night Buster Keaton Dreamed Me" is unique, powerful and magical. It mixes stark reality with colorful, humorous fantasy, while generating deep empathy for two very young sisters living alone in a severe and hopeless situation. Kerry Muir balances this tone deftly, from beginning to end. The play shows us more colors to tragedy than only sadness; it also shows us absurdity and breathtaking beauty."

-- Jim Uhls, Screenwriter, Fight Club

 "Brilliant! Kerry Muir’s play is a deliciously lyric mix of innocence and mayhem. An original and wondrous achievement." --Richard Caliban, MoM – A Rock Concert Musical, Composer/Director

SYNOPSIS

Two orphan girls inhabit a surreal landscape following the death of their mother, a silent movie fanatic and ex-Red Light District actress. The girls eke out a secret existence in their former apartment, now designated as a disaster zone following a devastating fire. The sisters grieve the loss of their mother in distinctly different ways: Haley, the younger, escapes into the fantasy-world of the old silent movies her mother adored; while Renata buries her grief under an avalanche of household chores, and a strange, self-destructive compulsion. The girls bicker, dream, commiserate, entertain one another, keep house and live by their wits. But when Buster Keaton mysteriously appears on the eve of Haley’s ninth birthday, the boundaries of the girls’ reality are stretched to breaking point. The surreal, magical arrival of Buster Keaton sets in motion the unraveling of secrets, both past and present, and is the catalyst for the discovery by both girls that they must leave one another behind, and find their own separate ways in the world, if they are going to survive.

MUSIC (underscoring, pre-show, post-show) by composer Bettina Covo, available upon request.

SPANISH TRANSLATION by Ercilia Sahores now available.

Award-winning play “The Night Buster Keaton Dreamed Me”
is now available from NoPassport Press on Amazon…

https://www.amazon.com/Night-Buster-Keaton-Dreamed-Me/dp/1387850628/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=muir+buster&qid=1559557926&s=gateway&sr=8-1

"Today on the train a man gave my son, Mac, a white teddy bear, really it was a girl’s teddy bear, and why did he give it to us? ..." 

READ FULL PIECE HERE

"Charlie was the ocean to me; he was the coast. I never went out to Santa Monica much unless I was visiting Charlie..." 

READ ISSUE #66

Honorably mentioned on the 2015 KILROYS "THE LIST" which highlights the 46 most recommended new female-authored plays for the year.

Semi-finalist, Sundance Theater Lab, 2016

A magical realist-family saga, set on California's central coast one year after the U.S. economic collapse. Carla, a single parent in her early thirties, is at her wit’s end keeping her eccentric, dysfunctional family afloat. Her father Julian, a retired academic and blocked writer, makes money only sporadically as a gambler. Her sixteen year-old daughter, Esme, is drifting further and further into troubled waters; her five year-old son, Jasper, suffers from nightmares and jumbled syntax. Julian’s lover and sometimes-editor, Gerard, has washed up into the house recently, but, like Julian, is also an unemployed academic with little to contribute in the way of finances. Carla ekes out a living doing facials and making organic beauty products, using a spare area of her living room as her salon, and her kitchen as a lab. There are occasional flashes, however, of unseen currents at work in the house; mysterious gifts pop up without notes from their sender, an out-of-control jasmine vine winds its way through the cracks in the walls and floorboards, and home-brewed teas spontaneously combust in their cups. When the family's path crosses that of two undocumented workers from Oaxaca, Mexico, buried family secrets surface, exposing old scars inflicted by the U.S./Mexico border—and giving Carla one last chance to right the wrongs of the past.

Plays on the New Play Exchange website…

https://newplayexchange.org/users/2981/kerry-muir

Synopsis:

Three tweens -- a boy who can't stop talking, a girl who can barely speak and a girl who claims to drive her own Cadillac -- are drawn into an unlikely friendship. 

SPANISH TRANSLATION by Ercilia Sahores now available, AND INCLUDED in this volume!

Purchase the play HERE

Music (underscoring) by Bettina Covo available upon request. Contact Bettina at: https://www.headystuffproductions.com/about-me

“I was reading a New York Times article about what was happening [in Syria], and I was like, ‘What’s the purpose of this article if I’m just going to sit here and keep reading? I have go, I have to help..."

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A 1950s jukebox casts an Edward Hopper-esque light on the Formica tabletop in front of singer/songwriter Michele McTierney. In the pink neon glow, the songstress pulls back her sleeve, revealing...

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"Wanted: World’s largest reggae collection seeks emotionally stable, progressively minded, financially secure home for long-term, committed relationship. Serious inquiries only, please..."

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"After a Long Odyssey, a Syrian Refugee Finds Safe Harbor In The Chesapeake..."

Photographs by Thomas M. Ferrara

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"Born only a year apart, Dan and Justin were raised by a fairytale-obsessed mom and a sci-fi aficionado dad who encouraged their sons’ creativity with a steady diet of fantastical literature, including J.R.R. Tolkien, Hans Christian Anderson and Arthurian legends..."

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE