I write in multiple genres; dramatic writing (monologue, plays, media scripts), nonfiction essays and memoir. Currently working on short stories.
PUBLISHED WORK
BOOKS
Six Monologues 1990-2007 by Jeff McMahon (NoPassport Press 2018)
BOOK CHAPTERS
"Ellie Covan" Fifty Key Figures in Queer US Theatre Ed. Noriega/Schildcrout (Routledge 2023)
"Jacki Apple 1941-2022" obituary published in multiple journals including Artillery (2022)
“John Bernd Zine” section of LOST AND FOUND; Dance New York, HIV/AIDS,Then and Now (Danspace Project 2016) ed. Ishmael Houston-Jones, Will Rawls
“Pull Focus” Innovation in Five Acts: Strategies for Theatre and Performance ed.Caridad Svich (TCG 2015)
“On men’s, and his own, watches” in Table Talk: From The Threepenny Review(Counterpoint Press 2015) ed Wendy Lesser, Jennifer Zahrt, Mimi Chubb
“HEEL” “Failure to Thrive (we small hours)” and “Straight Talk” online Indie Theater Now 2012-2017
"HEEL" and "Honorable Discharge" scripts Performing The Here & Now: An Introduction to Contemporary Theater & Performance Ed. Chris Danowski (Kendall-Hunt 2005)
“One Night Stand” Consider The Alternatives ed. Ron Ehmke (Hallwalls 1996)
“Beginnings” Poor Dancers' Almanac (Duke Univ. Press 1993)
“Letter to the Senate Subcommittee on Education February 1, 1990" Culture Wars ed. Richard Bolton (New Press 1992)
MAGAZINES/JOURNALS
Response to Jesse Green essay on diversity in theatre (New York Times September 17, 2022)
Review of John R Killacky's Because Art in Gay & Lesbian Review (March/April 2022)
"Two Artists' Lives, Lived Well" Hyperallergic (June 26, 2021)
"An Act With a Knife," Contemporary Theatre Review Backpages 30.1. (2020)
"A Roundtable on Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman" editor Response: the Digital Journal of Popular Cultural Scholarship (June 2019)
“John O’Reilly’s Radical Photomontages” Hyperallergic (July 29, 2017)
“Obituary for Steven Kent” American Theatre (online July 21, 2017)
“Not Afraid: Upon Hearing of Edward Albee’s Death at 88” Contemporary TheatreReview: Backpages 27.2 (July, 2017)
“Tom at the Farm and Mistress America” in Response: The Digital Journal of Popular Cultural Scholarship” Issue One, November 2016
"Reviews (2): Martin Pousson’s Black Sheep Boy and Fenton Johnson’s The Man WhoLoved Birds" in Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide September/October 2016
“Weekend Words” Hyperallergic Weekend Contributed to end of year cultural wrap-up
“Studio Eye” Hyperallergic March 28, 2015
"A Memory of Ruth Maleczech on November 10, 2013" Contemporary Theatre ReviewBackpages Vol. 24.1
“Restoration Comedy: Surgery As Performance Art” Hyperallergic May 10, 2014
“Lights! Camera! Inaction! It’s Performance Art” Letter to Editor, New York Times October 23, 2013 (print edition October 24)
“Taking Pictures” published Kenyon Review Online October 2013
“Petro-Koch: a proposal for the Metropolitan Museum” The Guardian June 16, 2013
“What Is It Worth?” Performance Research 18.3 'On Value' June 2013
“Stranded: Photographs by Martin Cox” Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide May/June2013
“Pull Focus” published online,TCG Innovation blog curated by Caridad Svich 2013
“Rehearsed and Coerced: Creating Counter Indications” TDR/The Drama Review Summer 2011 Issue #210
"Follow the Money? Location, Community, and Artist Funding" TDR/The Drama Review,Summer 2006 (issue 50:2 T190)
“Future Conditional: a short time teaching in Cuba” PAJ #81 (October 2005)
“Painted Warriors of Kandahar” book review of Thomas Dworzak’s Taliban. Gay &Lesbian Review Worldwide (January-February 2004)
“At Rest” Street Signs publication of University of London (2003)
“More Songs about Buildings and Food” excerpt from Safe As Houses. Movement Research Journal #22 (Winter/Spring 2000/2001)
“The Script of Sensation” New England Review (Summer 2000)
“Watches” Threepenny Review (#81 Spring 2000)
“Twilight in the Garden” City Limits Magazine (December 1997)
“Severe Piers” New York Blade News (November 28, 1997)
“Ideas in Motion: Using dance to confront stereotypes” Teaching Tolerance (Fall 1996)
“3 Untitled Fragments” XXX Fruit #3 Diaries (June, 1996)
“What Moved Me” Contact Quarterly (Winter/Spring 1996)
“Performance Art in Education” Performing Arts Journal #50/51 (1995)
“A Unity of Personal and Political” American Dance (American Dance Guild 1994-95)
“Rate of Exchange” (w/ Robert Flynt) Wedge Magazine (Fall 1982) ed. Brian Wallis, Phil Mariani
UNPUBLISHED WORK
Additional writing and unpublished work at my blog
From Safe as Houses: One Artist’s Life in New York City 1980-1990 (an edited version of this excerpt was published in Movement Research Journal #22)
Three brief excerpts from Closure. The first two focus on the St. Mark’s Baths, drawn from my own and others’ research. The third section is from one of the more than forty interviews I have conducted asking men about their relationship to gay baths and saunas.
Jeff McMahon received an MFA with concentration in nonfiction from the writing program of the School of the Arts,Columbia University in 1998, with his thesis project Safe as Houses: One Artist's Life in New York City 1980-2000, a memoir connecting the author's life in a low-income co-op in New York's lower east side with his involvement in the performance art community revolving around Performance Space 122 (now Performance Space/NY). He read an excerpt at the Rothermere Institute, University of Oxford, as part of the 2005 conference "The U.S. in the 1980's: the Reagan Years." Awarded a 2009 residency at the Edward F. Albee Foundation in Montauk NY to work on the nonfiction manuscript, and a 2011 residency at Fundación Valparaíso in Mojácar, Spain to develop that m.s. into a series of theatrical monologues, Tributaries, which he further developed in both live and video format. In 2013, he was been invited to read twice as part of Lit Lounge sponsored by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.
Dramatic works published in his book, Six Monologues 1990-2007 (NoPassport Press 2018). Scripts also featured in the New Play Exchange (NPX).
Essays published in Table Talk: From the Threepenny Review (Counterpoint Press 2015), Innovation in Five Acts: Strategies for Theatre and Performance ed. Caridad Svich (TCG 2015), LOST AND FOUND; Dance New York, HIV/AIDS, Then and Now (Danspace Project 2016), Culture Wars (New Press), Poor Dancer's Almanac (Duke Univ. Press), and in the journals Hyperallergic, The Guardian, Performance Research, TDR/The Drama Review,Kenyon Review Online, Contact Quarterly, PAJ/Performing Arts Journal, City Limits, Teaching Tolerance, The Threepenny Review, Movement Research, Gay/Lesbian Review Worldwide, Response: The Digital Journal of Popular Cultural Scholarship, Contemporary Theatre Review Backpages, and The New England Review.