About the Play:

Sea Marks is a full-length drama by Gardner McKay. A chance meeting sparks a long distance romance between a man and a woman from seemingly opposite worlds: a fisherman from a remote island off the coast of Ireland and a city girl from Liverpool. Sea Marks, he explains, are the lines made on the shore by the tide when it's high, as a sign that it will be coming back.

Sea Marks is the touching story of two people falling in love. Colm Primrose is a rough-hewn fisherman, living by the sea on an isolated island off the coast of Ireland, who has his head turned by Timothea Stiles, a visitor he meets in passing at a local wedding. She lives in Liverpool where she works in a book publishing house. Unschooled in letter writing, he tries his utmost to court by mail and after a year and a half succeeds in arranging a rendezvous at which, to his surprise, she persuades him to live with her in Liverpool. Their love affair ends when he is forced to return to a life he understands. Gardner McKay's play beautifully captures the heartache of long-distance love and when the call of the heart challenges the call of the wild.

Sea Marks was tested in 1973 as part of the Summer Theatre program on Salt Spring Island, BC before premiering in 1974 at the Hollywood Center Theater in Los Angeles, winning the prestigious Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. It has been produced in New York City in six Off-Broadway productions; the Players Theatre ("Best Off-Broadway Play", New York Times) the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC), and other theatres. It has been presented throughout the United States and Canada (where it won a National Regional Theatre Award), and Europe, including The Edinburgh Festival and The Pitlochry Festival, Scotland. The play is a favourite in the regional theatres for its lusty language and deep well of emotion (to say nothing of a producible two-person cast size).

Cast: 1 female, 1 male

What people say:

"Deserves the fame it has achieved in regional theaters around the country." — Albany Times Union

"There's abundant humor, surprisingly honest humor, that grows between two... people who love each other but whose lives simply cannot be fused... It could easily last forever in actors' classrooms and audition studios." — The New Yorker

"High marks for Sea Marks." — The New York Times

"Utterly winning." — New York Magazine

"Funny, Touching, Well Crafted." — The Associated Press

"[Sea Marks] stands apart not just for its two strong performances but for the sheer beauty of its language... McKay...writes with what seems like a deep understanding of Irish culture and of the men and women who populate some of its lonely shores." — TheatreMania

About the Playwright:

Gardner McKay (1932-2001) was an American actor, artist, college instructor, author and a professional skipper. He was a sculptor and had done a few small movie roles before he was noticed at a Hollywood coffee shop and plucked from obscurity to star in TV's Adventures in Paradise, based loosely on the writings of James Michener. The 1959-62 ABC series was high-profile but his greater joy was travelling the world and writing plays and fiction. He worked as a drama critic in Los Angeles and also taught play writing through the extension program at UCLA.