Michael Downend(1936-2020)
- Actor
Scriptwriter and actor for stage and television (Member: The Authors
Guild, Writers Guild of America, Dramatists Guild, PEN) and
Photojournalist (Member: ASMP, NPPA, EP). Licensed pilot: AOPA #460890.
Also writes as Liam Tracey. Former US Marine and graduate British Royal
Marine Commando School. Lives Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Writer/narrator
of award-winning PBS documentary, A Journey to the Endless Mountains,
Frank Lloyd Wright Falling Water and other programs. Min, his play for
radio, broadcast on NPR, is the first in a series about women-ordinary
and heroic-commissioned by public radio. An American Wife, a stage play
written in collaboration with his late wife, novelist, playwright and
poet, Karen Blomain, premiered with an Equity production to sold-out
performances at The Electric Theatre Company. Nora Hussey produced and
directed An American Wife in Boston in spring 2012. Recipient of
Rockefeller Grant for his play, The Mola Mola Fish and Pennsylvania
Council on the Arts Playwriting Fellowships. Among his other plays are
Aren't You Bonnie Bedelia?, The Light From Distant Objects, The
Watershops Pond, Going Out Noisy, The Plovers, The Covert Motel, Mercy
Street, The Old Folks at Home, Occoquan, The Hazard, Sylvan Beach, High
Thin Cirrus (Sold out in New York), The Woman at the Hockney Exhibtion,
The Vallarta Tango, Rattlesnake Roundup, and The Pig Killers. Min, his
play for radio about Min Lurye Matheson who helped found the ILGWU, is
being developed as a full-length script. His poetry has been published
by the University of Chicago Press, the Endless Mountains review and
others. Downend has also produced book covers (including the cover art
for The Season of Lost Children, Karen Blomain's novel), one-man and
group shows. Honored for photo and narrative coverage of the March for
SovietJewry in Washington, DC. Shooting in Mexico in 2014 for Los Ninos
de Mexico.
