By Kerry Shiller, Zoetic Stage

This week, Zoetic Stage opens its fifth world-premiere production, Clark Gable Slept Here, a Hollywood satire by award-winning playwright Michael McKeever (who talks about the play in the above video.) Directed by Zoetic Stage’s artistic director Stuart Meltzer and starring Carbonell Award winners Michael McKeever and Lela Elam, Clay Cartland, Vanessa Elise and Robert Johnston, Clark Gable Slept Here transports the audience to the fantastic world of Tinseltown.  As one of the silver screen’s brightest stars charms his way through the Golden Globe Awards ceremony, his staff tries to figure out what to do with the dead male prostitute on the floor of his penthouse suite.

Playwright McKeever takes a look behind the closed doors of the Hollywood elite, and presents a jet-black comedy on what it means to be a “man” in the make-believe world of motion pictures – where nothing is ever as it seems and closets are used for so much more than hanging up your tuxedo.  Clark Gable Slept Here, funded by the Knight Arts Challenge as part of a project to put more Miami playwrights’ work onstage, runs March 20-April 6 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami. (Tickets available here.)

Founded in 2010, Zoetic Stage produces contemporary theater, with a strong commitment to developing new work to become part of the American stage repertoire. Check out what playwright Michael McKeever has to say in the video about writing a world premiere in the first part of a four-part series: Anatomy of a New Play.