Sean Michael McCord '82

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Sean Michael McCord '82, a School of Theater, Film and Television graduate, has been awarded the National Partners of the American Theatre Playwriting (NAPAT) Award by the Kennedy Center for his full-length play "Moving." This award comes with a cash prize, membership in the Dramatists Guild and the Playwrights’ Center of Minneapolis, an invitation to attend the National Festival at the Kennedy Center and a professional development summer residency. McCord’s play was nominated from among eight Kennedy Center college regions for the national award.

"Moving" tells the story of several couples over thirty years as they move in and out of a single apartment in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. The story was inspired by some of McCord’s own adventures as a struggling Hollywood screenwriter after graduating from UCLA. The play was first developed as a staged reading for the Playwright’s Lab at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, where McCord is now pursuing his M.F.A. in playwriting.

Todd Ristau, Program Director of the Hollins Playwright’s Lab, noted: “We’re very proud of the recognition this play is receiving, and how that success reflects on the graduate playwriting program at Hollins. I’ll be directing a full production in January of 2020 as part of the Hollins-Mill Mountain Theatre Winter Festival of New Works. You learn the most about a play when you are in production and I’m really looking forward to helping Sean continue to develop the piece in rehearsal.”

After spending much of his twenties in Los Angeles, working at the UCLA Film & Television Archive by day and writing at night, McCord sought out new adventures by moving to New York City in 1987. There he met his wife, and a few years later they were raising a family in Virginia.

“I put aside my writing for a while,” McCord said, “but I never lost my love for the arts.” Once his children were old enough to give him more time to pursue his interests, McCord was determined to complete his M.F.A. “That was a chapter of my life that had remained open, and I found exactly what I was looking for in the Hollins Playwrights Lab,” a six-week intensive summer graduate program that McCord has attended every year since 2015.

McCord plans to start his M.F.A. thesis play at Hollins this summer. “It’s been an amazing journey,” said the writer. “'Moving' was the first full-length play I wrote after my initial year at Hollins, utilizing all the tools I was given in my early classes, and it has continued to follow me in my development as a playwright.”

"Moving" premiered in Charlottesville in 2017 as the inaugural production of the Charlottesville Playwrights Collective, a theater company started by McCord and other local playwrights dedicated to the production of new works by Charlottesville writers. In addition to this national award, "Moving" also won the Southeastern Theater Conference 2018 Charles M. Getchell New Play Award and the 2019 David L. Shelton Award at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Region IV.