James Mainard O’Connell has worked professionally in just about every facet of theatre since graduating from Hendrix College with a major in Theatre in 2003. He has worked as an actor, playwright, director, designer, and/or technical director in New York, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and Arkansas. In the midst of it all, he earned an MFA in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in Performance from Mary Baldwin University, which led to his first publication, a scholarly paper called, “Hell is Discovered” (published in the journal, Renaissance Papers, 2008).
As an educator, James has taught theatre to students from 1st grade to graduate school and all ages in between in settings including classrooms, summer camps, and scene shops. Over the course of his career, he has worked with students at Columbia University and Kingsborough Community College in New York City, James Madison University in Virginia, and elsewhere. Since 2011, he has directed the middle and high school theatre program at Episcopal Collegiate School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
As a playwright, James is a three-time winner of the Hendrix-Murphy Playwriting Contest and has had several plays produced, from family-friendly murder mystery comedies (Mountain of Crime and Sudden Death) to adult-skewing one-acts (Painted Distraction and (s)election) and theatre for young audiences (Tad! or, The Frog Prince and The Haunting of Goldilocks and the Three Bears).
