Playwright Kathryn Graf has completed a memoir.
“I’ve written a memoir about my mother, a victim of Camp LeJeune poison water, who died at 25.
She was also a victim of my father, who stashed her things in the basement and wouldn’t allow her three kids to know her.”
About Kathryn Graf
Award-winning Playwright and Author
Writing for the stage since 2003, Graf has built a distinguished career creating character-driven plays known for their veracity, wit and emotional depth.
Before turning to writing, Kathryn worked professionally as an actress and voice-over artist, experience that informs her ear for dialogue and her deep understanding of performance. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Actors' Equity Association, and SAG-AFTRA.
In her first memoir, Graf’s long held beliefs about her life are upended after her father dies, causing a maelstrom of emotions and a quest for answers. She ultimately must take a hard look at her life from a completely different perspective; the underbelly, the lies like worms hidden away, distorting her reality, the truth right in front of her, always there, yet never seen. How could she have been so stupid? And naive? And so damn passive? Beverly in the Basement recognizes how we create emotional truths in the absence of real evidence, and how a child’s illusions no longer serve us as adults.
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Plays and Book
Surviving David:
An autobiographical story of a married woman’s struggle to cope after her husband drops dead. Hurling through an altered life of single-parenting two small children, handling rocky finances and battling emotions that blindside her, this young widow is forced to take inventory of her new identity and is not terribly impressed. Raw, funny and painfully honest.
The Snake Can
The Snake Can is an exploration of relationships in middle age. Focusing on trying to understand the choices and challenges of what some people refer to as the ‘age of caution,’ The Snake Can weaves the story of a group of people who challenge themselves to find love and personal fulfillment in the middle years of life, wondering all the while how they managed to get this old and still not know anything.
Always My Dad
A children's picture book (ages 5-10) in which a small boy deals with the loss of his father. Always My Dad offers the hope that love endures after death and a deceased father (or mother) can be a unique, invisible friend throughout one’s life.
Hermetically Sealed
The May family has its daily routine; the oldest boy comes home from partying at dawn, the same time his mother, Tessie, begins her work baking cakes. At noon, Tessie wakes her younger son, who plays video games while Tessie works. This day-to-day works just fine, helping them maintain a private, isolated world where they can keep their secret carefully concealed and almost evade their unspeakable pain.
What Critics Have Said
"… A convincing storyteller who has impressively distilled her very personal experience into a viable evening of theatre."
Julio Martinez, Variety
"With a truly challenging and intelligent story line, ‘Hermetically Sealed’ engages its audience and challenges it’s viewers in a way that few theatrical programs do today."
David C. Nichols, L.A. Times
Kathryn Graf’s carefully layered drama about a family in delicately poised denial, though slow to cohere, rewards forbearance. ‘Hermetically Sealed’ is quietly haunting.
"… A satisfying evening of intelligent theatre, made admirable by Graf's thoroughly detailed analysis of human relationships and by a strong ensemble, unafraid to convey vulnerability.”
Don Grigware, Broadway World
What’s superb about Graf’s insightful play is its refreshing unpredictability, its allegiance to its focus (the women and their enduring friendships) and the raw scenes, of which there are several, where all six characters express themselves with searing honesty.
L.A. Weekly
"In a solo-show memoir, ‘Surviving David,’ Kathryn Graf chops and mixes the stages of grief into unlikely new combinations. Some are inviting, some ugly, all self-revealing to a fault."
Rob Kendt, N.Y. Times
‘The Snake Can’ (a reference to the old gag gift, a Jack-in-the-Box for adults), though set in the New York suburbs, fits snugly into the Westside demographic, and it knows well how to amusingly provide an intelligent refection of its intended audience. It should prove to be deservedly popular.
Hollywood Reporter
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