by James Nelson
Winner – Flash 405, February 2021: “Your Digital Stories”
Virtual Play
Judge’s Comments:
Humor is hard to do well on Zoom, but I was laughing aloud at this one. The stakes are high from the get go, the characters well-established, and the relationships are strong, especially between father and daughter who share a sense of humor but also reveal a deep care for one another on other sides of the Zoom-sphere.
James Nelson is a playwright and director currently residing in Chicago. James recently received his M.F.A. in directing from Indiana University, where he directed mainstage productions of Titus Andronicus and Machinal, as well as a studio production of Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation. James worked for several years as a freelance director in the San Francisco Bay Area, directing productions for Custom Made Theatre Company (The Book of Liz and In Love and Warcraft, which received the 2015 Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle award for overall production, direction, and ensemble), Ross Valley Players (A Month in the Country and Chapter Two), Masquers Playhouse (Farragut North and Dead Man’s Cell Phone), FaultLine Theater (The Ice Cream Sandwich Incident), Dragon Productions (Becky’s New Car), Novato Theater Company (Inspecting Carol), as well as shorter pieces for the San Francisco Olympians Festival, the One-Minute-Play Festival, and others. He spent several years acting and directing in Germany, and was previously the artistic director of the Anglo-Irish Theatre Group in Tübingen, where he directed productions of Equus, Translations, The Pillowman, And Then There Were None, Black Comedy, and Romeo and Juliet. Originally from Kansas City, James has a B.A. in Theatre from UMKC.
Photo Credit: Jayson Hinrichsen