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About the Author
When people ask whether I write comedies or dramas, I never know how to respond because I don’t set out to write either. My plays are about people trying to make a connection - with other people, with just one person or with the world.
That need to connect is in each of us, and it is inherently both serious and funny for all of us. So I tell people I write comedy-dramas.
I was born in a small town in Kansas. After high school in Chicago and college at the University Delaware, I moved to New York. I received my MFA in screenwriting from Columbia University. I now live in San Diego.
Aside from my master’s thesis and one other screenplay, I’ve written only for the theater.
My plays have been presented in New York,
San Diego and Philadelphia.
My hearing loss is thought to be the side effect of a drug given when I was two months old. So I've basically been deaf since birth. I wear a cochlear implant and a hearing aid, and rely on lip reading. On a good day, I can get by in
Michael Conley
American Sign Language. (My being gay
is thought to be the result of traditional,
in utero, development...)
speech reading (aka, lip reading). I can make myself understood in ASL (American Sign Language).
My being gay is thought to be the result of traditional in utero development.
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