Victor Wishna is an award-winning author. Articles he has written have appeared in newspapers and magazines all over the country. Now he’s written a play that will be produced locally by the Barn Players. “To the Dogs,” directed by Lindsay Adams and featuring Josh Brady, Alice Pollock and Jeff Shehan, will be presented on Dec. 7, 8 and 9 at 6219 Martway in Mission, Kan.
Wishna, a member of Congregation Beth Shalom, has not written a lot of plays before, but it’s something he’s always wanted to do.
“I’ve always loved theater and the book I wrote was interviewing 61 top American playwrights,” said the author of “In Their Company: Portraits of American Playwrights,” published in 2006 by Umbrage Editions. It is the winner of the 2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards Silver Medal.
A graduate of Stanford University and the New School’s creative writing MFA program, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Baltimore Sun, the Miami Herald, the Kansas City Star, Humanities, and other major magazines and newspapers. Wishna currently contributes a weekly real estate feature to the New York Post and his column “Letter from New York” is syndicated nationally. At one time his column also appeared in The Chronicle. He also served as special aide to Chancellor Arnold Eisen at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he assisted with researching, editing and writing of official speeches and publications.
After nearly 12 years living and writing in New York City, Wishna returned to his hometown of Kansas City, where he lives with his wife and their baby daughter. In 2011, he founded The Vital Word and, as chief editorial officer, has helped find the right words for an array of nonprofit, corporate and individual clients. His words can also be seen —and heard — via the local and national media outlets to which he regularly contributes, his efforts as senior editor at KCMetropolis, his language-related posts as a founding contributor to Book Riot, and his regular commentary on NPR affiliate KCUR-FM.
When not writing for publication or pleasure, Wishna is honing his stand-up routine, which he has performed at numerous clubs and special events around New York, the Midwest and elsewhere. In June 2010, he was named New York’s second-funniest amateur Jewish comedian by The Jewish Week.
This is the first play Wishna has written, outside of a school setting, that has been produced. The opportunity energizes him.
“It’s really exciting. It’s a big deal for me,” he said.
He’ll see the play rehearsed for the first time this week. He’s spoken with the director but he has not yet met any of the three actors in the play.
“It’s cool. I do love theater and it is something that has always been part of what I do. When I was a kid in high school and college I was involved in acting, producing and writing. In my professional career I’ve written a lot about theater,” he said.
“One of the things I think is wonderful about theater is it’s a collaborative effort. I was excited to write something that was an acceptable blueprint for a play and I’m excited to see what happens when a director and actors and all the other people that are involved from a technical standpoint take that and make something out of it,” he said.
He explained the play is about three racing greyhound dogs moments before what turns out to be their last race.
“I was trying to write something that could stick within these parameters, specifically a 10-minute parameter and I was inspired by David Ives, (a contemporary American playwright) who writes a lot of short, comical but somewhat meaningful plays,” he said. “I had been reading some of his short plays the night before so I just sat down and wrote this.”
