Patrick McCray
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Patrick was lucky enough to grow up
just a few blocks from Louisville's last, great, neighborhood movie
palace, the Vogue Theater, one of the most celebrated repertory film
theaters in the region. There, he worked throughout high school as
usher, a job that legend suggests was earlier held by Louisvillian Ned
Beatty at the very same theater. Schooled in film and theater history
and theory by Carl Wohlschlegel, Patrick considered a number of careers
ranging from meteorology to law enforcement. In 1990, he moved to San
Diego to study playwriting, and by May of 1992, saw the public
performance of his first play, Wigwam!, as well as several issues of
his internationally published comic book miniseries, Elvis Shrugged,
for Revolutionary Comics -- a company for which he also served as
editor. Elvis Shrugged would go on to become a cult favorite as a
graphic novel, winning praise from newspapers across the country, and
inspiring fan mail that Patrick still receives to this day. At the same
time, under the wing of Production Designer John Iacovelli, Patrick
gained the opportunity to work as a design assistant on the pilot for
the hit TV series, Bablyon 5, and then later served as art department
buyer for the beginning of that show's sophomore season. In 1994, he
left Babylon 5 to enter the MFA directing program at LSU, where he had
the opportunity to study under Barry Kyle, lifetime Associate Artistic
Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company of London and Stratford, as
well as John Dennis, who served for eight years as the Artistic
Director of the Resident Ensemble of the Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles.
Moonlighting as a film critic for a British web site, Patrick's
comments on Duck Soup would later be cited by Roger Ebert in his column
and book, The Great Movies. A drama coach in Knoxville, Tennessee,
Patrick is now a director of over thirty plays, has been a professional
Shakespearean actor, and his voice work in radio commercials has been
heard throughout the Midwest.