Directing Alumnus Rory McGregor '17 writes, directs, and produces Conway which will be presented at TheaterLab. McGregor recently served as the Associate Director for the Broadway production Sea Wall/A Life starring non degree Columbia College alumnus Jake Gyllenhaal ’02 and Tom Sturridge. McGregor also served as the Associate Director for Ink on Broadway this past spring, and he directed the world premiere of Nick Payne's short play Interior, at the Summer Shorts Festival this year at 59E59.
In Conway, imagine spending your whole life crafting a ‘spectacular’ career: photojournalist to photographer, filmmaker to blockbuster filmmaker. And then, in just an instant, someone steals it from you. Someone makes everything you’ve worked so hard for, their own. Or, imagine finding that out three years after they started. Unsatisfied with the way things are going, Alan Conway assumed the identity of Stanley Kubrick turning his life, and the lives of those around him, completely upside down. Welcome to the world of Conway, where in this totally ‘true’, fictionalized story, everything may not be what it seems.
McGregor developed Conway from another play he wrote called Contrast, which focused on the lives of three different con artists. The play investigated the different root causes of identity theft. Contrast was presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Alan Conway, who was one of the characters in Contrast is based on the real figure of the same name, who stole the identity of Stanley Kubrick and impersonated him for three years. McGregor states “[Alan Conway] held a special fascination for me and I always got the sense that there was more exploration to be done with that character. I always knew I wanted to go back to his story at some point.” Conway entirely focuses its story around Alan Conway using his life and occupation as the structure of the piece. Just as Conway assumed many identities over the course of his life, the four actors in the play assume all of the different characters in this man's life. At the beginning of each performance, one of the four actors is randomly selected to play Alan Conway for the evening.
Conway opens at TheaterLab on November 14 and runs through November 24, with Stage Management by alumna Alexis Nalbandian ’19.
