Today we’d like to introduce you to Sean O’Connor.

Hi Sean, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.

I came from a beautiful small town in New Jersey. A childhood of trees and ponds and brooks, of sleigh riding, sports, a swim club. On the surface, it was the suburban American dream. Beneath the surface, the tempests were active and fierce. I had smart parents, but my dad was beset by alcoholism. The effects of that rippled through every cell of the family web. And the confrontations between my dad and me rippled through every atom of my being. Painful, yes, but it’s perhaps the main reason I became an artist. To release that pain through my work. To understand it.

Most of what I’d known about the outside world, I’d gleaned from paper-thin, 1960s TV shows like “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best.” They made no sense to me. They were not real. But one day, when I was 11 or 12, I was walking past a room in my house where Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were screaming at each other on our little black and white TV. I was stilled to the core. This thing…on the TV…the depth, the brilliance, and the complex and unruly emotions pouring out of it, were what I had grown up with. This…was real. Then, in school one day, upon seeing the early Frederic March movie of “Death of a Salesman,” I realized that narrative storytelling could serve to explain life’s troubling recesses. In a way where the audience, and the creator, could understand their own experiences, and transform them from pain into insight. That was when my creative fire was lit.

At 18, before college, I hitchhiked around Europe. The exposure to different cultures, and to the books and music and museums of those cultures was life-changing. I came back and entered Columbia University. And there I seriously began to write—stories and poetry—and to perform in plays. Acting, for me, was fun and interesting. But writing set my blood on fire. I still carried the pain from earlier, but I was learning to focus. And to express it in my work. The rich education I received, plus the stark reality of the New York streets, where every facet of life was happening everywhere I went, only served to give me more fuel, more insight into what I could do creatively. I graduated. I kept writing, and acting. I auditioned all around NYC, got plenty of roles in Off-Off Broadway theatre. Then I started getting TV roles. But I couldn’t stop writing. One day, after ending a TV acting gig, a play, yet unwritten, leapt into my head. On a bus. Triggered by a scene in a movie I’d just seen, “Love Streams.” When I got home, this play in my head, began writing itself, pouring out through my little Bic #2 pen, and falling deliriously onto a page. A year and a half later it won a national playwriting award and had several great productions. More plays, each a resculpted and somewhat skewed rendering, or masquerade, of some epoch of my life, leapt into my head, and poured through my trusty Bic onto the page. I soon realized that I couldn’t count on these plays to simply leap into my head and rush out through my pen, I’d have to learn “story…narrative,” to have a template when sudden inspiration failed. I studied theory the way a drowning man clings to a life-raft. I knew I had to have this knowledge down flat. It worked. Plays kept coming. Fed, yes, by early pain, but also what my imagination could do with that pain. They were serious but also, quite funny. I got approached by Hollywood producers. I wrote scripts out there. I did pretty well. But I always missed the pure artistry of playwriting. The depth of self, character and society I was able to explore. So I continued both, plus acting and directing. And at one point, for a while, relatively true autobiography begain to appear in my work. At this time in my life, my plays get produced here and there. I’m sending an independent film that I wrote, directed and acted in, along with several real good NYC actors, to festivals. And I’m exploring new vehicles of expression: I’m writing a novel, and recording an album of songs I’ve written. And during, or running parallel to this experience…I got married. Way back. I’ve a great wife, Pamela. And two fabulous, smart, hysterically funny daughters, Sophie and Juliet. Somewhere, somebody has been looking out for me.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?

No, never too smooth. There are many obstacles and challenges in a career like mine. But they’re essentially present in anything worth pursuing. Here are some.

COMPETITION: You jump into this game and you’re immediately going up against the best in the country, because the places their work appears are the places you want your work to appear. And their work is as good as the press tells you. But don’t let it phase you. If you’ve got the talent, the only thing between you and them is work. So go to work. It’ll pay off.

EDUCATION: I never knew how important education was until I knew. You can’t rise above the cream without having a mind that is very highly cultivated. For a few reasons. One is the importance of knowledge about everything, and how it offers you so many different resources of information to use in your work. The other is, education, like world travel, changes you. It changes your neurology. It creates all these new connections and capacities that lead to deeper thought and more imagination. Simply put, a real good education powerfully increases your arsenal of creative tools.

NETWORKING: A mixed bag. The results are huge. It is through networking…personal contacts…that careers are made. That’s a hard fact in this world. I was fortunate to have a lot of contacts early on, basically from all the acting I had done. It opened doors for my writing. A problem with me is I’ve never had a desire to schmooze and talk up people I don’t know, and perhaps don’t care to know. But…you should. It pays off.

KING DOLLAR (MONEY); You might never have to worry about this. But most in these fields do. Sometimes, good money comes in through your art. Other times it doesn’t. You need a backup. Preferably one that utilizes your artistic talent. Teaching your craft. Using it in businesses that rely on it: publishing, advertising, etc. Literary and visual artists are needed in many different businesses. And a good situation is a part-time situation, 1/2 or 3/4 time, whatever, that still leaves you quality time for your art. And that leads to my thoughts directly below.

ART/COMMERCE: You can choose to solely be an artist, to solely express your deepest visions, despite how any one in the outside world might react. Though you might not make much money at all. And/or you can use your talents to appeal to the majority of taste in the outside world and make as much money as you can. The decision is yours. I chose a combination of both. To express my deepest visions in my work, but to try and keep it in a realm that the public could identify with and be entertained by. Without sacrificing my vision. And sometimes I won’t worry at all about public acceptance or money, and just try to nail that vision of that work as truthfully as possible. And other times I’ve pursued decent work mainly to make money, i.e., writing films for a studio, or writing/performing radio commercials, or acting on TV, etc. Keep your Art as sacred as possible. But learn, too, how to create, at least some things, in a way that will reward you financially.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?

As mentioned earlier, I’m a playwright, actor/director, and a new filmmaker. I am most proud of my playwriting. It’s been the telescope through which I view, and try to understand, the cosmos. I worked very hard to become good, and to get my work noticed. I stand behind it very firmly. And I have a nice rep. What sets me apart? I entered my field…playwriting, filmmaking, acting and directing, first as a writer. Then as an actor. Later as a director, too. I do all of them. And now I’m writing a novel for the first time. And I’m exploring music. I taught myself guitar and harmonica, and I’m having a ball writing and recording songs. We shall see where that goes.

Can you share something surprising about yourself?

It’s always a surprise to others that I was a soap opera star back in the day, before I started writing plays. I knew nothing about soap operas, but an agent sent me to some auditions. I ended up getting a lead role on one for a year, and a recurring role on another for a year. It was an interesting experience, on many levels. Its story gets told, as well as many others, in the novel I’m writing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://writersean.com