Kevin McCoy was a fixture in off-Loop theater for at least a decade. He appeared in dozens of shows at Stage Left, Bailiwick, and Center Theater, and he was a member of the Lifeline ensemble. Then three and a half years ago, he dropped out of the scene. He says the change was triggered by, of all things, success.
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In 1992 McCoy teamed up with jazz musician Robert Mazurek for the show Frank’s Corner, a series of urban tales accompanied by music, which premiered at the Nights of the Blue Rider Festival. “We’d only practiced it twice, once without a script in my hand,” he says. “I just trusted the improvisational nature of the performance.” The experience was so satisfying McCoy decided to take Frank’s Corner to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In addition to fine tuning the production, he spent the next year taking care of logistics–he had to pay for air fare, food, lodging, and a place to perform. “It cost me from ten to fifteen thousand dollars U.S. I really went into debt for the show.”
The step was positive, but McCoy now characterizes this period as lonely. He was unusually productive. “I did, like, seven projects that year.” But the work wasn’t satisfying. “I thought, ‘I am working so much, how can I ever have time for a personal life?’ I was working in shows and I was doing a day job like everybody else. I said to Rob Mazurek, ‘I think I’m going to be alone for the rest of my life.’”
Currently McCoy is in LePage’s most recent work, Geometry of Miracles, which plays for three days next week at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie. The show is about Frank Lloyd Wright, his third wife, Olgivanna, and her mentor, Russian mystic Georges Gurdjieff.
