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Jim O'Quinn

Jim O’Quinn is the founding editor of AMERICAN THEATRE magazine, the only national general-circulation publication about theatre in the United States, now in its thirty-fifth year. O’Quinn served as editor-in-chief from AT’s launch in April 1984 through October 2016. He also edited the quarterly SDC JOURNAL of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers for eight years, and has written the Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year reports on theatre in the US and Canada for nearly a decade. His articles and reviews have appeared in a wide range of publications, including Theatre HeutePlaybillHigh Performance, Tatler, the now-defunct Manhattan weekly 7 Days, and TDR: The Drama Review, for which he served as managing editor in the early 1980s at New York University. Prior to moving to New York he was a city-desk reporter for the New Orleans Times Picayune and an award-winning publisher of a small-town Louisiana weekly newspaper. He has also composed, arranged and directed music for the theatre, and his children’s opera The Littlest Emperor was produced in 1978 at New Orleans’ Contemporary Arts Center. O’Quinn is the recipient of the 2010 Excellence in Editing award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education; two Eddie Awards for editorial excellence at AMERICAN THEATRE; and six Louisiana Press Association awards.

Black and Blue
Essay

Black and Blue

Dramatizing the Life of a Pioneering Policewoman

26 October 2017

Theatre journalist Jim O’Quinn writes about eighty-three year old Yvonne Bechet, whose life and work inspired a new play about policing and racial justice in her hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana.