Colin MacKenzie Mitchell

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My original podcast fantasy adventure series: The Laundronauts: A Potentially Untrue Tale Based on Actual Events is available everywhere!The production is a collaboration between IHeart Media, Noel Brown, lead executive producer, and my own company, Little Brother Sam Productions.Season One of The Laundronauts stars the late great Ed Asner, in his final performance, and stage and screen icon, and my brother, John Cameron Mitchell.The show also features voice luminaries:
Stephen Kearin,
Kate Prendergast,
Corey Krueger,
Alison Fraser,
and Isaac Robinson-Smith,
as well as a teenaged cast of rising stars, and twelve original songs written by sound designer/composer Dave McKeever.

I'm a graduate of the inaugural 2018 Antioch University-Santa Barbara MFA in Writing and Contemporary Media program, and a professional storyteller, performer, and teacher with over 30 years of experience as a screenwriter (“Welcome to September”), award-winning film director (“Memphis Calling”), comic scribe (Marvel’s “Spiderman: Out of Reach,” Double Take’s “Remote: Dead Air”), award-winning playwright and performer (“Linden Arden Stole the Highlights”), Broadway and National Tour veteran (“Six Degrees of Separation”), Editor-in-Chief, (Bitter Lemons, circa 2008-2016), and recipient of Paramount's Chesterfield Screenwriting Fellowship (2003). I live in Los Angeles and continue to teach and work in the Arts, Entertainment and Media industries.

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Author: Colin Mitchell

Spiderman vs. Doctor Octopus: Out of Reach (2003-2004) Marvel Comics, Inc.5-episode comic series, later compiled and released as a single graphic novel for YA audience.Editors: Teresa Focarile and Corey Sedlemeir.

Remote: Dead Air (2014) Double Take InteractiveCreator of parallel universe comic series entitled: “1966 Ultimate Night of the Living Dead;” Episode #1.Editors: Bill Jemas, Michael Coast.

Colin MacKenzie Mitchell
(Curriculum Vitae)

A proud American Army Brat conceived in Scotland and born in West Germany, son to a two star General in the U.S. Army and a Scottish school teacher painter, now both deceased. Mitchell has two surviving older siblings, John and Chris, and a son, Maxwell Henderson.A 2018 graduate of the inaugural Antioch University-Santa Barbara MFA in Writing and Contemporary Media Program, Mitchell was the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the now defunct Bitter Lemons, the most popular performing arts media site in Southern California, circa 2008-2016. He has worked in the arts, entertainment, and media industries for over 30 years, as actor, writer, director, executive producer, teacher, critic, in film, TV, theater, media, academia, and the sequential and graphic arts.

As an actor:
Broadway and National Touring productions: Six Degrees of Separation; Film and TV: Rabbit Hole, LA Confidential, Hard Four, The Interrogation, Combination Platter, The Chocolate War, Star Trek: The Next Generation; other roles include Off-Broadway and regional productions in NYC, Seattle, San Francisco, LA, Boston, Washington D.C., Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Detroit.

As a screenwriter:
Currently developing the trans-media franchise entitled The Laundronauts in collaboration with Ed Asner, John Cameron Mitchell and Noel Brown of IHeart Media.He is the author of Marvel’s Out of Reach and Double Take’s Remote: Dead Air.He has written, directed, and produced two short films:
Memphis Calling starring Craig Robinson (Knocked Up), winner of the 2008 San Joaquin International Film Festival Best Short Film, and Labor Intensive starring Rich Sommer (Mad Men).His first feature, Welcome to September, was produced and released through Scarpaci/Kelly Productions in 2008.He has written screenplays, teleplays, and adaptations for such companies as Alcon Entertainment, Automatic Pictures, Keylight Entertainment, Scarpaci/Kelly Productions, Bee Holder Productions, and Wil-Horn Enterprises. And written for such producers as Steve Wegner (Racing Stripes), Frank Beddor (There’s Something About Mary), Nellie Bellflower (Finding Neverland), Steven Lee Jones (You Don’t Know Jack), and Rainn Wilson (The Office).

As a playwright:
NYC productions include: Linden Arden Stole the Highlights, Ensemble Studio Theatre, God’s Butt, At the Break of Day, Stolidly Opposed, New Jersey, Double Take and Too Many Sugars in the Tea at the AboutFace Theatre Company.in Seattle: Like a Beast and Musing at the New City Theatre and Stolidly Opposed with the AHA! Theatre Company.in San Francisco: Linden Arden Stole the Highlights and Flurrious at The Edinburgh Castle.in Los Angeles: Madness! Murder! Mayhem! at Zombie Joe’s Underground, Mission to Mate at the 2012 Hollywood Fringe Festival, Breaking and Entering at Theatre 40 and Zombie Joe’s Underground, Musing at The Production Company, Bitten by a Fly at the Actor’s Lab, Yolanda and the Black Muslim Bakery at the Falcon Theatre, Turnips & Passion at the Sierra Stage, and Linden Arden at the Sierra Stage, Two Roads Theatre and the 2014 Hollywood Fringe Festival.

Honors:

THE LAUNDRONAUTS: A POTENTIALLY UNTRUE TALE BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS

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The Laundronauts is a modern day fairytale that answers one of the great mysteries of our times: What happens to the missing sock?

Starring the late great Ed Asner, in his final performance, along with star of stage and screen, John Cameron Mitchell, the show was conceived, written, directed, and executive produced by younger brother, Colin MacKenzie Mitchell.

Season One boasts 10 episodes, 12 original songs, and 5 hours of ear-to-ear entertainment, and is a collaboration between IHeart Media, Noel Brown, lead executive producer, and Mitchell's own company Little Brother Sam Productions.

New York Times Mention of Laundronauts

December 14th, 2021

"I also provided voices for my brother Colin MacKenzie Mitchell’s “The Laundronauts,” starring the late great Ed Asner, about a boy who is stuffed into a washer by a bully and disappears. His friends, the Laundronauts, must go in and rescue him. I play the Spirit of Absentia, the land beyond the washer where all the lost things go: socks, coins and boys. Along with their hopes, fears and dreams. Lockdown metaphors abound."-Interview with John Cameron Mitchell
by New York Times writer Kathryn Shattuck

Performer

Scribe

WRITING/DIRECTING/PRODUCING

SEQUENTIAL ARTS

MEDIA

SCREENWRITING

PLAYWRITING

SHAMAN

My Upcoming Seminar (January, 2023): "A Good Story, Told Well: A Seminar on the Fine Art of Dramatic Writing" is based in the fundamentals of Lajos Egri’s “The Art of Dramatic Writing”.
Both a recipe and a road map, “A Good Story, Told Well” is a simple approach to writing that breaks the process down into two basic but essential parts:A Good Story. Told Well.Starting from this foundation, my remote, 12-week, 40-minute-a-session seminar, delves deep into both “story” and “telling,” putting the most granular elements of writing under the microscope, including premise, character, conflict, orchestration, audience, medium, POV, tone, and specificity.To register and join this exclusive Tribe of Scribes, or for more information on the seminar itself, please send inquiries to: cmm2666@gmail.com.

Script analysis, writing coach, tutoring, for Writer's Exchange (WEX), Antioch University-Santa Barbara (2018-2020).

Playwriting workshop at Theatre Americana, Los Angeles, CA. Donna Scarantino, Artistic Coordinator. (2010)

Acting workshop for teenagers, movement, speech, improv, scene breakdown, with The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, San Francisco, CA. Phil Lowry, Artistic Director. (1995)

Improv and performance with the group The Oxymoron Gesture Factory, Seattle, WA. Bil Sheldon, Artistic Director. (1990)

Vision

The way people consume their stories today has changed. The way people tell their stories today has changed. Even some of the stories have changed. Nevertheless, the recipe that makes “a good story, told well” as compelling and entertaining today, as it was yesterday, as it will tomorrow, remains the same:Craft. And a dash of Inspiration.And yet, today, in the Twenty First Century, sometimes the best execution of an idea is in a medium, or genre, not yet mastered, or even imagined, by its own creator.So let's add some cooking instructions to that recipe:Craft. A dash of Inspiration. Medium Well.But where is the next generation of teacher who can articulate trans-media writing to the next generation of scribe? Where is the new breed of savvy, experienced, professional mentor who can show an eager mind how to best utilize the inherent freedoms and limitations that are unique to Film, Television, Theater, Prose, and Emerging Media, and use them in their own work?Where is the shaman I needed when I was a developing writer?Inquire within.

BITTER LEMONS

(Co-founder/Editor-in-Chief/Provocateur: circa 2008-2016)

“Fearless, funny and unabashedly vainglorious.”
– LA Weekly

“Indispensible.”
– American Theatre Magazine

“A theatrical lightning rod.”
– Hollywood Fringe Festival

“LA’s online theatrical gadfly.”
– LA Stage Times

“It is not clear how theater critics will respond to the request that they not review the Los Angeles run, which begins performances on Thursday. An offended actor/playwright, Colin Mitchell, published on the local theater website Bitter Lemons a plea for defiance: “Let’s flood the LA Media outlets with writing about this show.” The theater critic for The Los Angeles Times, Charles McNulty, said Thursday that he was in discussion with his editors.”
– New York Times

“Mitchell has had a wry and colorful style as a theater blogger dealing in news and commentary, but until now Bitter Lemons had not offered original theater criticism. The site’s calling card has been its “LemonMeter,” a ranking it issues by sifting through all the published reviews it can find and boiling streams of prose down to a single number that theatergoers can use as a guide. The best score is “100% Sweet” and the nadir is “100% Bitter.”
– LA Times

“It’s Hollywood Fringe Festival season, and this year one of the fest’s keynote events, the annual panel of critics sponsored by the provocative local theatre website Bitter Lemons, opened with a startling piece of theatrical showmanship of its own. As each of the veteran critics on the panel arrived, they found an envelope taped to the bottom of their chair. Each envelope contained a crisp $20 bill. As the critics murmured their approval, Colin Mitchell, Bitter Lemons’ editor and publisher, who was moderating the panel and who had taped the cash under the chairs, cackled, “You have all been openly and transparently paid! I hope that you will all be able to maintain your integrity!”
– American Theatre Magazine

“Colin did the unthinkable. He assigned a share of the responsibility to those individuals in Chicago for what befell them, and in so doing held up to his readers what we most feared; not the terror of having no control over our lives but the knowledge of how much control we have.”
- The TVolution

“Colin's main beef was that the cordial tone between McNulty and me was too effete. He was annoyed by what he perceived to be McNulty's disconnect from the small theater community. Though Colin conceded that I did challenge some of the assumptions McNulty was making about showcase theater in Los Angeles, I think he wanted me to bite McNulty in the throat and sever an artery.”
– LA Weekly

“Now, across town Colin Mitchell, the tenacious editor behind Bitter Lemons, a site that aggregates LA Theater reviews, is trying to launch an initiative that cuts out all the middle men. Basically, theater companies would pay for a review. A challenging model to be sure.”
– KCRW

“With Colin, we get into how and why Bitter Lemons started, and the function it serves in the LA community. One of the most necessary (and interesting) is the long- form journalism it produces about the community. Colin recounts his first major investigative piece, which dug into a dispute between a theater company and a playwright and exposed Crown City Theater as a bunch of rotten crooks. From there we get Colin’s 13-point response to Re-Imagine LA Theater, a movement to revise Equity’s 99-Seat Plan, including why Equity sucks, and why Goldstar isn’t to blame for the devaluing of theater tickets.”
– SF Born Ready Podcast

“So, is Bitter Lemons’ plan a form of payola or is it a necessary paradigm shift in arts journalism? Will mercenary criticism work its way into the Cleveland market should the influx of professional theaters outpace the size of the local critic corps? Is this a viable opportunity for community theaters to get the press they deserve? As with most trends, we’ll have to keep an eye on Los Angeles and see how this pay-per-play model plays out.”
– Cleveland Jewish News

Linden Arden Stole the Highlights

(Writer/Performer/Producer)

“A testament to the capacities of storytelling, the story’s savage beauty lingers long after the stage lights have faded.”
– LA Weekly

“If ever there was a new piece of theatre that was sultry, stylish and stinging, Colin Mitchell’s one-man masterpiece is it.”
– Backstage

“A wonderfully savage morality tale. Colin Mitchell took the opaque lyrics of ‘Linden Arden Stole the Highlights’ and created a translucent character who is simultaneously unbelievable and full of humanity. His writing and acting throughout is - to say the least - riveting.”
– LA Times

“I described the performance in 1996 as “a testament to the capacities of storytelling,” and I stand behind that, still.”
– StageRaw

“Powerful! His storytelling abilities could bring back the genre.”
– West Hollywood Weekly

“Wonderful!”
– Entertainment Today

“Electrifying and heartbreaking!”
– LA Dramalogue

“A witty, biting tale of murder, lost faith and survival, utterly moving.”
– SF Bay Guardian

“Raw energy, nerve ends exposed.”
– SF Dramalogue

“Mitchell does a superb job evoking the denizens of the Tenderloin and of the tiny provincial city in which he now lives.”
– Stage and Cinema

“Mr. Mitchell has mounted his showcase piece again for the 2014 L.A. Fringe Festival, but we can hope he’ll get it produced after its five-performance run is over. It’s that good – no, that amazing a piece of theatrical derring-do that you’ll not forget any time soon.”
– Stagehappenings

“To be utterly transported by a theatrical experience that resonates long after you’ve left, IS the holy grail of experience that we all seek to find when we enter a space outside our own reality. Colin Mitchell’s one-man show, Linden Arden, is that rare theatrical gem that combines the jagged underworld of iniquity with the poetry of survival and dignity.”
– The Working Author

“Mitchell breathes life into Arden by way of a lively, compelling monologue. Supplying the voices of the various characters he encounters, he paints a colorful picture of Arden’s milieu, from the mean streets of San Francisco to the bucolic highlands of Scotland.”
- BlogCritics

Bitten by a Fly

(Writer/Director/Performer/Producer)

“Written and directed by Colin Mitchell, this is a worthwhile show with strong performances and a well-crafted script.”
- Backstage

“Writer-director Colin Mitchell’s riveting two-act parable is a variation on an old theme of human salvation, but Mitchell’s presentation is so sizzlingly irreverent and fun, it never feels like a homily.’”
– LA Weekly

“Extraordinary!”
– Santa Monica Mirror

"Mitchell’s play is an intense but humorous visit to a surreal world where flies can be fallen angels in disguise, who gently guide the gifted humans toward grace and redemption."
- LA Times

Breaking & Entering

(Writer)

“An ornate treatise on truth and illusion. It's an admirably complex script, the outcome in doubt up to its denouement.”
– LA Times

“A very clever play that grapples with and compares dueling themes: reality and illusion, fame and fraud. The play sparks and shines when it reaches the intersection of these two ideas.”
– LA Weekly

“Very cleverly written by Colin Mitchell with an almost narrative dialogue that the audience is actually listening in on, we learn the deep dark secrets of a writer's fan and the writer the fan obsesses on.”
- NoHoArtsDistrict

"Playwright Colin Mitchell, who is the editor of the popular and respected online theater review magazine Bitter Lemons, has done an admirable job of rewriting, revising, and refreshing his play. Much better, Colin. Nice work and nice writing."
- Santa Monica Daily Press

“This fun little tidbit, written by the infamous Colin Mitchell of LA Bitter-Lemons, explores the question of reality, conscience, death and questions what really happens when our lights go out?”
– The Los Angeles Post

"Superior writing. Extraordinary acting. Superb direction. Theatre most unique. Put them all together and you have Zombie Joe's Underground."
- Working Author

Mission to Mate

(Writer/Director/Producer)

“The plays drive from a Rod Serling–like mystery (one of the playlets refers to a lost Serling manuscript), propelled by unexpected comebacks and situations, absurdist, romantic and caustic, that won’t let go.”
- LA Weekly

“Three blisteringly contemporary one-acts unfold in one hour in Colin Mitchell's "Mission to Mate," as three sets of strangers meet under odd circumstances—and one of the two participants tries to seduce the other. Mitchell's writing, with each "movement" interwoven in clever ways almost undetectable unless one pays sharp attention, is the star here.”
– Backstage

“Bitter Lemons editor Colin Mitchell turns the tables in more ways than one with his scintillatingly sexy trio of one-acts starring Alla Poberesky and Michael Sanchez.”
- EyeSpyLA

Madness! Murder! Mayhem!

(Writer/Performer/Producer)

“Mitchell’s trio of vivid campfire tales at ZJU (Madness! Murder! Mayhem!) brings just a slight modernizing touch of lo-fi grunge to classic forms of scary storytelling. Lasting altogether less than an hour, in spirit they fit the template of a half-hour radio or television anthology series, although the material would certainly have been too scabrous for network during the form’s heyday. They are vivid, proudly old-fashioned and revel in just enough trangressiveness to keep their chestnut situations theatrically fresh for their modest duration.”
– StageRaw

“What struck me first about Madness! Murder! Mayhem!, playwright Colin Mitchell’s homage to the genre at (fittingly) Zombie Joe’s Underground, was the respect both he and director Jana Wimer showed to the Grand Guignol’s traditions, and their skillfulness in the staging them.”
– The TVolution

The Fourth Estate

(Writer/Director/Producer)

"But the real excitement was the script. This is without a doubt Mitchell’s best, most thought out, most exciting piece to date."
- Gia On The Move

Remote: Dead Air

(Author)

"If you’re looking for a laugh and a bit of fun this week, check out Remote. The jokes alone are worth it, but it’s definitely a series that continues to come together in both the story and the art and might just end up being a break out series from author Mitchell and this otherwise very consistent line of titles from Double Take."
** – Dustin Cabeal,** Comic Bastards

“Colin Mitchell’s script uses the premise and plays around with the location and time period. Though the movie is referenced, Mitchell tells an original tale about how a day at work can suddenly turn into Hell. In Mitchell’s witty brand of humor, Samantha is treated like a low-level employee while her boss basks in the money. “
– Jorge Solis, BloodyDisgusting.com

"NOTHING LASTS, MADAM, NEITHER THE PAIN NOR THE PLEASURE. I ENJOY AND ENDURE BOTH IN EQUAL MEASURE."~ THE NARRATOR
"THE LAUNDRONAUTS"

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