The Whole Deal
Here's a more extensive biography.
Born and raised in Texas, Brad McEntire served from 1999 to 2006 as the founding Artistic Director of theatre group Audacity Productions. Since 2008 he has been the Artistic Director of Audacity Theatre Lab. He holds a BFA in Theatre and Performance Arts from New Mexico's College of Santa Fe and a Master's degree in Playwriting from Texas Woman's University.
Brad served as the Literary Manager at the Undermain Theatre in Dallas (2007-2010). He was an original member of the DFW Playwrights' Alliance, is a sometimes member of UNIMA-USA, the Applied Improvisation Network, The Playwrights Center of Minneapolis and a former company member with Dallas' innovative (and now sadly defunct) Our Endeavors Theater Collective.
He is an alumnus of Directors Lab West (2004) and the Chicago Directors Lab (2009). He was also a performer, director, resident playwright and instructor with Plano Children's Theatre where he worked intermittently as part of their Professional Touring Series for nearly a decade.
Brad is a veteran of several sketch and improvisational comedy troupes including Estranged Bedfellows (NM), Molotov Cockroach (NYC), The French Club Dropouts and the Mild Dementia Continuous-Play Variety Hour (both of Dallas, TX). He also performed with the improv group The Victims and, up until 2015, one half of the infamous comedy duo Fun Grip (with Jeff Swearingen as the other half). NOTE: Fun Grip has reunited and since March 2022, the duo has been performing regular gigs around Dallas, TX. More info... HERE.
Brad studied shadow puppetry informally at Hong Kong's Ming Ri Institute of Puppetry and mask performance technique with international teacher/performer Hoi Chiu. Over the last several years Brad has worked with New York-based puppet artists Chris Green, Erin Orr and Lake Simmons, in particular as part of Ft. Worth's Hip Pocket Theatre's Annual Cowtown Puppetry Festival.
Brad has trained in European style contemporary clowning with Texan' Jeffry Farrell, Tom Greder of the Nouveau Clown Institute, and Spain's Andreu Segura (of l'Escola de Pallassos MallorClown). Brad has also had a healthy dose of American circus-style clowning, training with Barry "Grandma" Lubin, Mark Gindick and John "Mr. Fish" Lepiarz of Big Apple Circus, Tiffany Riley and Dick Monday (former Director of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College) as well as Larry Pisoni (Founder of the Pickle Family Circus) at the NY Goofs.
Though mostly self-taught as an improviser, Brad has participated in improv workshops with the likes of Charna Halpern (ImprovOlympic), Asaf Ronen (YesAnd.com), Andy Eninger (Second City, Chicago/ Creator of Sybil) Jill Bernard (Drum Machine), Joe Bill (Annoyance Theatre, Chicago/Creator of Bassprov) and Nancy Fine (The Groundlings, L.A.).
As an commercial actor, Brad has appeared in commercials for FedEx, SuperPages, First Choice Power, Piccadilly Restaurants and Apex Trucking. He was represented by the Mary Collins Agency from 2008-2015. If you are curious, you can see some of his commercial acting listings at: Casting Networks. A much more complete acting resume is available at Actor's Access.
Brad's funk-musical shadow puppet retelling of RAPUNZEL, created in collaboration with musicians Lee Holt and Stuart Grant, played in 2006 and 2007 in Hong Kong. His stage works have been produced/developed by Austin's FronteraFest at Hyde Park Theatre, Texas WordSpace, Our Endeavors Theatre Collective, Expanded Arts NYC, Nouveau 47, Audacity Theatre Lab, Rover Dramawerks, Square Peg Collective, EndTime Productions, Project X, Tumorboy Productions, The Outsider's Inn Collective, Theatre In My Basement, Cry Havoc, Dallas' Festival of Independent Theatres, The Out of the Loop Fringe Festival, Overtime Theatre, The Dallas Museum of Art, The New York International Theatre Festival, Hong Kong's DEER Theatre, Le Rideau Theatre Café, Bobbindoctrin Puppet Theatre, Alleyway Theatre, One Minute Play Festival, Kitchen Dog Theater, Plano Children's Theatre and fringe theatre festivals all over the country.
His plays include Que Sera, Giant Monster, I Have Angered a Great God, A Tall Tale of Texas, Night of the Tarantu-bears (co-written with Jeff Hernandez), Dinosaur and Robot Stop a Train, Raspberry Fizz, Carter Stubbs Takes Flight, For the Love of an Anesthesiologist, I Brought Home a Chupacabra and more. A collection of holiday-themed ten-minute plays called The Yeti in the Airport Lounge and Other Holiday Tales is available on Amazon.com. McEntire has also created, toured and performed a collection of one-man shows: Chop, Robert's Eternal Goldfish, Cyrano-A-Go-Go and The Beast of Hyperborea. He has presented them all over North America.
Brad is one of the sub-arcana of long-form solo improvisers. He is the creator of the original solo improvisational story format Dribble Funk, a hybrid creation at the crossroads of long-form improv, traditional theatre and storytelling. In the summer of 2013, in celebration of his 38th birthday, Brad performed a 380 minute long solo Dribble Funk improv set (that's six hours and 20 minutes). He currently teaches improv and creativity workshops from time to time. For more information on Dribble Funk Solo Improv, see how it falls in my history with comedy.
Brad also developed and continues to curate the deceptively simple story-telling improv format/show Monologue Jam with support from the Alternative Comedy Theater. and more recently MINT Presents and the Institute Theater in Austin, TX (these last two, now sadly defunct).
He has blogged since the year 2000 and semi-maintains his personal arts-and-adventures-oriented blog on the ancient platform LiveJournal called The Theatre, Thoughts and Travels of B. McEntire. He is the creator and moderator of The Solo Performer, a blog about one-person theatre productions. Brad was also an occasional culture journalist and contributor to The Stage Directions Blog and TheaterJones.com (both now sadly defunct).
As a visual artist, McEntire works mostly in pen and ink and, less often, in acrylic paint. In mid-2012 he launched a series of illustrations based on the plays of Samuel Beckett. In May of 2010 he launched a webcomic called Donnie Rocket Toaster-Face, which ran until 2015. A collection of the Donnie Rocket Toaster-Face comics, I HATE HAWK SEASON!, was made available on Amazon.com. In 2016, he released a short comic called The Secret Island, about an unlikely friendship between a kayaker and an alien. During the pandemic, McEntire wrote, drew and published a picturebook for his five year old son. The book was titled Petey Gale Goes Up and Beyond. He released it on Amazon. In 2023, McEntire launched a weekly webcomic series called The Ongoing Saga of J. Herbin. It can be read... HERE.
Brad was one half (alongside part-time artist and pop culture addict Jeff Hernandez) of the producing team and on-air voices behind Bike Soccer Jamboree, an "extremely unnecessary" online semi-weekly podcast. Most BSJ episodes revolved around Brad and Jeff disagreeing over some pop cultural or lifestyle phenomenon. In early 2015 Brad created the original podcast series The Rumbleshanks Tapes, about a would-be world conquering cyborg named Captain Odysseus Rumbleshanks. More recently, McEntire hosts and produces the Cultivated Playwright Podcast. It is updated semi-regularly. Listen... HERE.
McEntire continues to instigate new projects for the stage, page, canvas and screen.
Core Thoughts About the Theatre...
- Simple trumps fancy.
- The creation of small, powerful theatre is noble and necessary. Intimate in scale, but epic in scope.
- More often, artists should instigate and take responsibility for their own creations. This is especially true for fields where the art is traditionally created collaboratively and interpretively, like in the theatre.
- Experimental is only a modifier for the word theatre, as in Experimental Theatre. It must engage and entertain first, then move us all forward.
- The line between High Art and Low Art is and should be, extremely blurry- especially NOW.
He’s also interested in rocket packs, dinosaurs, cowboys, robots, tigers, goldfish, exotic locales, adventure, love, sex, romance, and other things kick-ass
Five Fun Facts...
- I enjoy good cigars, smooth bourbons and great food.
- I read a lot. And fast. You can see my all-time most influential books on me, personally, on my Book Shelf page.
- I travel extensively (you know, when there are no global pandemics happening) and keep a Dopp kit packed and ready to go at all times.
- When I am not in public, I sing a lot, often making up songs on the spot. My wife is very patient with me.
- I love movies. A lot. If you’re curious, check out my 100 favorite movies.(circa 2016)
Artistic Statement...
Well, this changes periodically (which I think is a good thing), but for the time being it would be:
My work, especially as a playwright, but also as a performer and visual artist, explores idiosyncratic little worlds. These parallel microcosms are populated by eccentric misfits. Troubled, lost, amused, broken, absurd, desperate, isolated and forgotten - each is searching for his or her own sense of history, identity, and purpose.
Contact Brad... Feel free to E-mail me
