Amy McKenzie | |
|---|---|
 McKenzie 2019 | |
| Born | August 2, 1959 |
| Occupation(s) | Producer, director, actress |
| Years active | 1972–present |
| Notable work | New Age Vaudeville, The TV Dinner Hour , An Evening with Elmore & Gwendolyn Putts, the Neighbors Next Door |
Amy McKenzie (born August 2, 1959) is an American producer, director, and actress. She is one of the founders of the New Age Vaudeville theatre company and the Third Avenue Playhouse.
McKenzie has worked and lived in Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, where she has produced and performed for the stage and television. She co-founded the New Age Vaudeville theater company as well as co-producing and directing their biggest cult hits, An Evening With Elmore & Gwendolyn Putts, The Neighbors Next Door and The TV Dinner Hour , both written by Richard O’Donnell and featuring herself, O’Donnell, Megan Cavanagh, Todd Erickson, Bobby McGuire, Peter Neville, Michael Dempsey, Lisa Keefe, Caroline Schless, Tom Purcell (writer for The Colbert Report ) and Del Close. Rick Kogan of the Chicago Tribune hailed both productions as "Among the most polished and clever productions of the season, a pair of devilishly inventive shows that won over critics and audiences alike." [1]
McKenzie has directed and acted in numerous productions at the Peninsula Players, America's oldest residential summer theater, as well as founding and producing their fall season in the early 1980s. [2] She was on the board of directors for the Peninsula Players (before, during, and after its restoration) for over a decade, and was Artistic Founding Director of the Third Avenue Playhouse [3] in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, whereby she helped to convert an old movie house into a state-of-the-art performing arts theater.
In 1998, McKenzie produced and directed the new musical comedy Wish Wisconsin, written by Richard O’Donnell to celebrate the state's 150th birthday. It opened on January 2, in the Fish Creek Town Hall Auditorium in Door County, Wisconsin. Songs included "Wish", "So Blessed", and the show-stopper "Oh!, Wisconsin". [4]
All credits are as producer/director, unless otherwise specified.
McKenzie is the daughter of Broadway theatrical producer James B. McKenzie.
Summer and Smoke is a two-part, thirteen-scene play by Tennessee Williams, completed in 1948. He began working on the play in 1945 as Chart of Anatomy, derived from his short stories "Oriflamme" and the then-work-in-progress "Yellow Bird." The phrase "summer and smoke" probably comes from the Hart Crane poem "Emblems of Conduct" in the 1926 collection White Buildings. After a disappointing Broadway run in 1948, the play was a hit Off-Broadway in 1952. Williams continued to revise Summer and Smoke in the 1950s, and in 1964 he rewrote the play as The Eccentricities of a Nightingale.
WBEZ – branded WBEZ 91.5 – is a non-commercial educational radio station licensed to Chicago, Illinois, and primarily serving the Chicago metropolitan area. It is owned by Chicago Public Media and is financed by listener contributions, corporate underwriting and some government funding. WBEZ is affiliated with both National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Radio Exchange (PRX). It also broadcasts content from American Public Media and the BBC World Service. It produces several nationally syndicated shows for public radio stations, including This American Life and Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!.
Del Close was an American actor, writer, and teacher who coached many of the best-known comedians and comic actors of the late twentieth century. In addition to an acting career in television and film, he was one of the influences on modern improvisational theater. Close is co-founder of the ImprovOlympic (iO).
Anthony Crivello is an American actor, experienced in stage and screen performance. He appeared in the original cast of several Broadway shows, including Les Misérables, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Golden Boy, Marie Christine, and The News. In 1993, he won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his performance as Valentin in Kiss of the Spider Woman.
Megan Cavanagh is an American actress, who is best known for portraying Marla Hooch in A League of Their Own and the voice of Judy Neutron in Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius.
James Valcq is an American musical theatre composer, lyricist, and librettist, as well as an actor and arts administrator. He contributed to various theatrical works.
Peninsula Players is a summer theater located in Fish Creek, Wisconsin. Founded in 1935 by Richard and Caroline Fisher, it is known as "America's Oldest Professional Resident Summer Theatre."
New Age Vaudeville was an American professional theater troupe founded by Richard O'Donnell and Amy McKenzie, and was part of the Chicago comedy boom of the 1980s.
Richard O'Donnell is an American playwright, composer, lyricist, poet, actor, and stand-up comic. He has worked and lived in New York City and Chicago, where he has written and performed for the stage and television. O'Donnell co-wrote the ASCAP award-winning Off-Broadway musical comedy One & One, and Radio City Music Hall's Manhattan Showboat. He founded the New Age Vaudeville theatre company, the New Variety cabaret, the Black Pearl Cabaret, and St. John's Conservatory Theater. As a stand-up comic, he was the executive producer and host of the Fox, Chicago comedy variety television show R. Rated.
The New Variety is an American cabaret created and produced by Thomas Goodman and Richard O'Donnell. It was a fast-paced, ever-changing volley of acts that included jugglers, fire-eaters, stand-up comics, singers, musicians, and sketch comedy troupes. It was hailed by June Sawyer of the Chicago Tribune as a cabaret for the '90s.
Love, Loss, and What I Wore is a play written by Nora and Delia Ephron based on the 1995 book of the same name by Ilene Beckerman. It is organized as a series of monologues and uses a rotating cast of five principal women. The subject matter of the monologues includes women's relationships and wardrobes and at times the interaction of the two, using the female wardrobe as a time capsule of a woman's life.
Chicago City Limits (CCL), is the longest running improvisational theatre company in New York City, New York.
The Practical Theatre Company was a Chicago-based theatre company founded by Northwestern University students and active throughout the 1980s. Its productions included new plays, satiric agitprop, rock and roll events, and a series of successful improvisational comedy revues. The PTC, whose motto was "Art is Good", is notable for the fact that the entire cast of its 1982 improvisational comedy revue, The Golden 50th Anniversary Jubilee was hired by Saturday Night Live.
G. William "Bill" Oakley, Jr. was a theatrical producer-director-actor and seminal figure in the revival of early American theater, melodrama and vaudeville with theaters in Colorado and Missouri.
An Evening With Elmore & Gwendolyn Putts, The Neighbors Next Door is an American musical comedy, with a book, music, and lyrics by Richard O’Donnell, directed by Amy McKenzie, and performed by the New Age Vaudeville theater company in Chicago.
The TV Dinner Hour is an American sketch comedy review written by Richard O’Donnell, directed by Amy McKenzie, and performed by the New Age Vaudeville theater company in Chicago.
James B. McKenzie was an American theater producer best known for heading the Westport Country Playhouse, the American Conservatory Theater, and the Peninsula Players.
Klaw and Erlanger was an entertainment management and production partnership of Marc Klaw and Abraham Lincoln Erlanger based in New York City from 1888 through 1919. While running their own considerable and multi-faceted theatrical businesses on Broadway, they were key figures in the Theatrical Syndicate, the lucrative booking monopoly for first-class legitimate theaters nationwide.
Stella Holt was an American theater producer. She served as managing director of the off-Broadway Greenwich Mews Theater in New York City for 15 years.