Vynnie Meli
Vynnie Meli is thrilled that the world premiere of her dramatic comedy, Chopped Liver in Paradise, will be at the Jewish Theatre of the South from April 27th through May 21st. Set on a cruise ship amid a menagerie of comic characters, it is about two old friends as they make some surprising discoveries about love, friendship and fidelity. Please go to jplay.org for info.
Meli was a (locally and nationally) award winning art director, then copywriter, in advertising before writing her first play. That first play, Keats in Curlers, ran Off Broadway at The Looking Glass Theatre in 2003.
Meli feels fortunate to have found Working Title Playwrights early in her playwriting career. As well as that children’s play, the writers group has nurtured her work through several readings and a recent collaboration with the Atlanta Classical Theatre – the Passing plays. Her Passing Through was an abbreviated version of a play inspired by true events about an “all-girl” jazz band in 1943 traveling through the Jim Crow south with their first Caucasian, and Jewish, member.
Meli’s short play, September Tenth, is being produced at Inner Voices Social Issues Theatre at the University of Illinois. Strangers in the Morning is a romantic comedy with music. And her current project is a musical comedy: Love in the Middle Ages.
Meli grew up in Rochester, New York. She got a BFA in Sculpture (Multi-media) at Virginia Commonwealth University and had a studio at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria. She did post graduate work in Art History at the Art Institute of Chicago before getting a degree in advertising at the Portfolio Center.
Meli and her husband are also raising two teenage daughters. Talk about drama.