McKinnon Powell gets one performance at Theatre Row to tell it. 6 Out of 10, his solo show about an actor measuring himself against Hollywood and against the men he falls for, plays the United Solo Theatre Festival on November 13.
The show runs 60 minutes and gets a single 7pm slot, on November 13, in the Theatre Row complex at 410 West 42nd Street. That is the shape of a United Solo booking: one night, one performer, and a festival lineup that turns over around it. This one is billed as the New York premiere.
McKinnon Powell wrote it and performs it, and Jessica Lynn Johnson directed and developed it with him.
Powell plays himself, or a version of himself: a gay actor raised in the South, shaped by religious expectations and family history, chasing a perfect ten in Hollywood and in love while the 2016 election plays out around him. The account of that search runs through auditions and relationships, and it is told with multimedia, a gallery of characters and stretches of direct monologue. Shame, family wounds and what Powell calls outsourced self-worth are the material.
“It is a raw look at the way we as people are conditioned to gain our self-worth from outside forces,” Powell said of the piece.
Powell is from Savannah, Georgia, and has spent fifteen years in Los Angeles. He trained in the Meisner technique at Playhouse West and in improv at IO West, UCB and The Groundlings, and holds an MFA in writing for visual media from UC Riverside. His first screenplay, Magical Things, was a ScreenCraft quarterfinalist and a finalist in the Southern California Screenplay Competition.
Johnson has developed, directed or produced more than 200 solo shows, and runs Soaring Solo Studios. She holds the Best National Solo Artist Award from the Dialogue One Solo Theatre Festival, directs and teaches for the LA Women’s Theatre Festival, and toured her own solo pieces Ze and Oblivious To Everyone for more than fifteen years.
Tickets are $65. They are on sale through the United Solo listing for the show, by phone on (212) 714-2442, and in person at the Theatre Row box office, open 12pm to 5pm Tuesday through Sunday.
