Mark Mc Quown is the co-screenwriter of the feature, “PJ” (now titled, Heaven’s Messenger”), starring John Heard, Vincent Pastore, Robert Picardo, Hallie Kate Eisenberg, and company. This film is partially based on Mark’s award-winning play of the same title. Mr. Mc Quown has won many writing awards for the following; “The Rocking Horse Christmas”, first place in the animation genre at The Santa Clarita International Film Festival in 1997, Quarter Finalist in The Chesterfield Screenplay Fellowship in 1997 with “Pier 21”, Semi-Finalist in The Chesterfield in 1998 with “The China Tiger”, Quarter Finalist in 2000 in Scriptapalooza with, “Jane The Legend of Mountain Charley”, Finalist in The International Family Film Festival 2005 with the animated feature, “The Cat and The Rat” (co-screenwriter), Quarter Finalist in The Fade In Magazine Screenplay Contest in 2005 with, “The Missing Link” and Quarter-Finalist in The Zoetrope contest in 2007 with “The Sudan”. Most recently his full-length play, Resurrection Of The Snowbird was The Finalist in The Moondance International Film Festival in Boulder, Colorado and his screenplay, “The Contractor” (co-writer) reached the Semi-Finals of The Fade In Awards Screenplay Contest, 2015.
Mr. Mc Quown has an MFA in Directing for the Stage from The School of Theatre, Film, and Television at UCLA. He is a member of AEA, SAG/AFTRA, The New York Dramatist Guild, Association of Los Angeles Playwrights (ALAP) and InkTip.com online screenwriter service.
Plays
Resurrection of The Snowbird
By Mark Mc Quown
Synopsis
Resurrection Of The Snowbird is the story of an old sailboat that has been stowed away for years under the back porch in a sandy tomb under Mama’s house on the Island of Balboa across from the Newport Jetty in southern California. At the beginning Mama is dead but she acts as a ghost all thorough to the end of the play. She has died, sold the house and now all of the relatives, the cousins, the uncles, the aunts – have come to take away their share of her goods while she watches and comments.
Aunt Bar is mama’s daughter and her caretaker for the last thirty some odd years and there is a back lash of feeling in the family that Mama sold the house out from under her own daughter. She is there at the beginning, packing and wrapping and stacking boxes of stuff bound for someone else’s house. Marty, Mama’s granddaughter, is there with her husband Hal and their two daughters, Caroline and Cassandra. Cassandra has a very special place in Mama’s heart and in the course of the play – she leaves Cassandra an ancient, lost, antique ring that brings the family almost to war over who should have the piece of jewelry.
Lindsay, Marty sister and another granddaughter of Mama is there with her husband Evan and their children who are never seen in the play, only heard. Evan has taken on the task of resurrecting the Snowbird from the down under which required a dredge to take out the sand. The running dredge is a constant reminder to Mama about why she hated the boat so much and why she is so glad that it is finally being dredged up to be thrown away on the garbage barge.
Piece by piece, furniture by furniture, Mama’s home is taken apart in the two acts so what starts out as a fully furnished home of great antiques, in the end the house is almost empty. Also in the end, the Snowbird is hauled up and taken out on the end of the pier and placed on the garbage barge to be left in a land fill. The leaving of the sailboat is also Mam’s cue so after the fight over the lost ring all the families leave and Mama is alone except for two moving men who take the last large sofa and leave the house empty.
Resurrection Of The Snowbird has a cast of eight. Two men in their forties and six women who range in age from teenagers to Mama at eighty nine. The play takes place in a single set, Mama’s one time home and the time is the late 1980’s. There are two, male cameo’s at the end in the form of the moving men. They are on stage for one page.
Synopsis
“Angels, The Ninth Order” takes place in Heaven in a location called The Way Station. The Way Station is a cloud with some tables, toys, rugs, and places to sit down. The story has eight characters; four men and four women, whose ages range from ten, (or a woman who looks ten), up to the mid-sixties with Wendell the mechanic. There are one male and one female African/American roles, all roles are leads. As people die on earth, they come to a Way Station to work for their wings and to educate themselves in the history of God and the wars between good and evil.
In the beginning, Angel Pledges are dropped into the Way Station through a crude chute or tube offscreen and unseen. They hit the floor of the surface of the cloud and then roll through the red curtains separated by white sheers and join the slowly growing crowd of Angels-to-be on the cloud and sky painted floor.
“Angels, The Ninth Order”, is about evil and focuses on the present evil of ISIS or ISIL and the conundrum of why the Lord isn’t taking a recognizable stand in a fight that is overpoweringly about good and evil. In the end this new group of recruit Angels causes a mutiny in Heaven and all at the same time, they bail out of the Way Station, making their way back down the chute to earth to rejoin with each other as a band of informed citizens who are disseminating to all earthly beings that this evil we face on earth today is truly evil and may be ruled through the direct intervention of Morningstar, the King of Hell and one-time-leader of the Angels in Heaven and the army of light.
This is a Dramedy with eight characters including one, full-fledged/winged Angel and the last of the Angels of The Tenth Order of Seraphim. John is joined by seven others, all waiting in the queue to be full winged Angels of the Ninth Order. There is one primary location.
Four unrelated characters meet in an abondoned house outside the city to form new relations and new bonds of friendship as the rest of the world digs itself out of the hole left by Covid-19
Successes
My play Ripples was publicly read on Zoom by The Tiger's Heart Theatre Company of New York City. The reading was February 1, 2022.
Mark Mc Quown
Resurrection Of The Snowbird is The Finalist in The Moondance International Film Festival, Boulder, Colorado, 2015 in The Stage Writing Category