Joshua Conkel -- Playwright

(More blog entries from JesseSour)

"After seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the tender age of eleven, Joshua simultaneously became obsessed with performance, rock and roll, and underground pop culture. After spending the following seven years as a child actor/ teenage delinquent, he enrolled at Cornish College of the Arts where he began studying acting.

Frustrated by the lack of interesting plays and roles available for queers/weirdos/and other outcasts, Joshua began to write and direct his own work." -- from The Management Company's website www.managementcompany.org/joshua.htm

Joshua Conkel keeps a blog. He also writes plays. They are both characterized by a tough, outer shell, full of biting satire, and haunting tragedy, but under which is an ultimately humanist through-line. In his satirical play "Save Yourself for You", featured at CPF's spring sampler,  the protagonist is a teenage girl sentenced to death by stoning by her father, who has himself sired a brood of at least a dozen more children. It's a hypocrisy-seaking missile aimed at the abstinence-only, sanctity of marriage section of the population, but it never falls flat, nor does it feel overly bound by genre. 

Conkel is also the co-artistic director of the brilliant and successful off-off Broadway theater company The Management, which has bi-monthly salon series featuring emerging playwrights' work. Check it out! 

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