lee@leekitchenwriter.com
lee@leekitchenwriter.com
Broom Maker STAGE PLAY Finalist Austin
What it's about
Failing as a student and unable to carry on his family’s centuries old craft, a young Chinese entrepreneur overcomes cultural and political hurdles as he comically masters quánxī (gwan-shee) -I help you, you help me- only to discover that love comes first.
Find out more below.
Broom Maker© STAGE PLAY
Austin 2025 Script FINALIST
WFLO©
STAGEPLAY
Comedy: Anti-Semitism, spousal abuse and gender equality are confronted in a small Alabama town by six professionals trying to find meaning in their lives. They purchase a bankrupt radio station, convert it to talk radio format. The quest leads to a run-in with the town leaders and ultimately a trial.
“A raucously clever, deeply human Southern satire... WFLO crackles with wit, compassion, and fearless commentary. Lee Kitchen’s play doesn’t just entertain—it challenges, enlightens, and delights. A bold triumph of regional storytelling.”
- Jeffrey van Davis – former reviewer for Mulligan Stew NPR Chicago
Award winning STAGE and SCREENPLAY
The JoJo Mama and the Voodoo Queen © is loosely based upon outsider artists in the rural South during the nineteen-seventies. A young, African American woman creates voodoo sculptures and drawings on magazine covers that attract art dealers who compete for the work. The collectors eventually discover they must deal with the artist’s street-smart, surrogate mama with little formal education, but she is intelligent, savvy and does her homework, eventually taking control of the situation. Success comes and then, tragedy. That leads Mama Williams to embark on a mission to help other outside artists.
Stage Play
My second play winning the late Michael Warren Powell's Panelist Favorite award at the Last Frontier Theatre Festival attended by Edward Albee.
Screenplay
The screenplay was adapted from the stage play receiving best screenplay award and finalist in various film festivals.
Teaser
Press the SEE MORE button to watch the teaser filmed in one take in monstrous storm.
Other Work by Lee Kitchen lee@leekitchenwriter.com
Commutin' Train
Commutin’ Train is a journey from the past to the present. The past: forty-five to fifty years ago commuting on the Harlem Division Line from the Bronxville Station to and from New York’s Grand Central Terminal followed by three years commuting from Kenilworth, Illinois to and from Chicago. During those six years, poems or narratives were recorded on paper while commuting. A handful were published. Five years after the narratives, came the black and white photographs of the commuters and the stations along the Harlem Division Line in New York. Then, some forty years later, in 2017 through 2018, photographed new scenes of the old scenes, most in four-color and new narratives were created. That was in 2018 and 2019. The old is on the left side of the spread, complete with typos, but I didn’t want to alter the content for reasons you will see in the new narratives and photographs that mostly are on the right. This is for the millions of commuters who have to rush to the train every day. For everyone else, well, I hope it makes you smile and think about those crazy Commutin’ Blues.
Dogs of 331
Commuting between Montgomery and believe it or not, Niceville Florida where I worked for a college, I would travel the back roads with a hand held recorder, a Nikon camera, my radio on and an imagination gone wild. I took on characters, event, places and situations that sprung into my head and recorded the event- always marked by a country dog, a free dog, that I observed by the side of the road. A series of short audio tales or quips have been edited from the three hours of taped material.
Poems
MFA grads might look down on the list of publications where my poetry was published. Writer's Digest, The Buffalo News, Critical Perspectives in Accounting and Auburn University Montgomery's literary magazine. I Have not queried my poetry in twenty-five years. But I do have a collection of poems and some with visuals (photography and illustrations) including the Light Series where I used the various original and real stained glass windows in my apartment as inspiration for the moods that channeled into my head during poverty and a writing sabbatical.
Photography
Novel Joints (WIP)
Ben, eccentric octogenarian, former corporate executive turned bohemian, is forced into a nursing home by his adult daughter. A letter from a dying friend speculates Ben’s high school sweetheart—a love that never died—moved back home. That prompts Ben to convince his daughter to move him to his old hometown after years away except for a short stint when he was in his bohemian fifties. Ben could never exhaust the old flame even though he married another. At the nursing home, Ben jokingly
refers to as The Joint, his only friend is Jake, a street wise thirty-year-old Black attendant. The
two men bond as Ben reflects aloud on his bohemian life at another joint—a jazz bar, where writers, theatre people, professors, and crazies gathered. Ben uses Jake’s friendship to plot his escape. When Ben’s daughter visits the nursing home, she must chauffeur Ben in a fruitless search to locate his old girlfriend if indeed, she had returned home. The sleuth work includes stops at the former jazz joint prompting flashbacks of the underworld in the small conservative town. During one flashback, Ben recalls the night he met his high school sweetheart’s adult daughter who also
happened to be the daughter of Ben’s dying friend. The events from that chance encounter fuels Ben’s determination to find his old girlfriend, to explain, in hope of turning the old flame higher or to extinguish it, forever. The journey leads to a discovery contradicting the expression, true love never dies.
Line Art
Inside my head are images of business people's heads from my corporate days. They lurk in the far corner of somewhere in my brain and come out unprompted and without warning on napkins, scratch pads, ruled note books and once in a while on my iPad. I can't stop them. So, they take over and jump on the surface. Now, I am adding spot color to some of them. Therapy or insanity? Your call/
About Lee Kitchen
Bio: Third Person
Theatre: Most recently, the play Broom Maker selected as a Finalist in the Austin Film Festival 2025 Script Competition. Lee’s short play Mona and Leo received twelve performances at three South Florida theatres in May 2023. He’s written nine full-length plays, three one-acts, sixteen ten-minute plays and nine screenplays. The JoJo Mama and the Voodoo Queen received Panelist Favorite award from the late Michael Warren Powell, Last Frontier Theatre Conference. Short plays, Fortune Kooky and Fourth-Quarter Pick-Up, produced at the Tampa Bay Theatre Festival in 2017, 2019. Play, Hearing Art, read 2023 at White Mouse Productions, FSU, and at the Playwrights Round Table (Orlando) and as part of the DG Canada’s reading series. Ten minute play Parscription included in play festival produced by White Mouse Productions-three performances. In October, a stage reading of his one and only musical, Terrarium Earth, was performed by nine members of the White Mouse Theatre Company at Florida State University.
Films: First short film, thirty minutes, Scabs. Lee wrote the script and helped with casting and production. Carlos Miranda directed, filmed and edited the short while Lee was in Spain on business. The second film was The Audition, Bronco’s Dolls Go to Hollywood. Lee’s storyboard and script was selected as one of forty out of three thousand submissions as part of the AT&T Create-a-thon. Part of the short was filmed at the Warner Bros. lot. Lee directed the short. Editing and subsequent production was a learning curve with two different editors trying to salvage footage. Genie Says What? was written by Lee and was casting director. Robert Proctor filmed and edited the five minute film for the Easter Seals Disability Film Festival. The last short film was a five minute segment of The JoJo Mama and the Voodoo Queen, Lee’s award winning stage and screenplay. Lee compiled the segment, cast the actors and directed the film that was shot in a tornado-like thunder storm, outside, with only one take during the entire day. Lee has extensive commercial production experience from his days at the world’s largest ad agency and his experience as marketing director for two international companies.
Screenplays: Scabs the feature version, was recently selected as a Top Finalist at the Richmond International Film Festival. Received three Best Screenplay awards for the short screenplay Scabs at three different film festivals. Awarded Best Feature Screenplay at the Irvine International Film Festival for the historical drama, Picnik. Most recently, Best Screenplay award for my feature, The JoJo Mama and the Voodoo Queen at the May 2022 Austin Comedy Film Festival and the Silver Award for first time animation screenplay writer, Da Doo Waas, at the December 2022 Los Angeles Animation Festival. Produced five minute segment of JoJo Mama and the Voodoo Queen
Other
Lee wrote, acted and produced an audio series titled Dogs of 331 with over 78 hours of extemporaneous audio descriptions, narratives and stories along route 331 from Alabama to Florida. In addition, his full length play, SOS, Swans of Stratford was developed during a Dramatist Guild Master Class and revised during readings with Roland Tec's Wednesday Gathering.
Education
- BS and MA Journalism, University of Alabama.
- Participated in the Alabama Writer's Project (Poetry and Short Story Courses) studied under Marlin Barton (O'Henry Prize Winner) and poet, Peter Huggins.
- Tallahassee, participated in classes with Bob Shacochis and Janet Burroway at Florida State University.
- Attended workshops at Last Frontier Conference and Dramatist Guild in New York and LA.
- MBA degree in Buffalo when I simultaneously developed humor manuscript, MBA Guidebook, while attending classes.
- Dramatist Guild Master Playwriting Course 2018.
- Roland Tech's Songwriting Circle 2018.
- Sundance Collab Basic TV Writing Course and Sci-Fi Writing Course 2020 and 2021.
Service
Board member of The Peyton Tuthill Foundation. Provides scholarships to students who've lost a family member to homicide. www.peytontuthillfoundation.org
Instructor for study abroad programs for FSU in Spain, London and China. Later, program director for Tallahassee Community College study abroad programs in Tianjin, China. Traveled to China for over ten years.
Honorary Professor Tianjin Foreign Studies University
Languages
Some ASL, minimal Mandarin and elementary Spanish.
Associations
Dramatist Guild and Playwrights Guild of Canada.
Announcement
Welcome! Another pop-up refers to cuisine. Trying to get rid of it. A left over from when I once asked GoDaddy to update my site and it generated silly references to restaurants and food! Afterall, my name is Kitchen.