About Me

I'm  Kevin O'Brien!

I am a creative and passionate online teacher.

Here are a few things about me ...

Professional Actor and Comedian

Many years ago, I made a living as a stand-up comedian.  I also owned my own singing telegram company and performed over 2,000 singing telegrams in the St. Louis metro area.

In 1991, I performed at military bases around the world with an Old Fashioned Comedy Melodrama that I wrote and produced, on a USO-style tour.

Since 1989, I have been producing and performing in my own interactive murder mystery dinner theater shows.  I appear in about 150 live performances a year, at venues such as mansions, wineries and dinner trains.  I write all of the scripts and we perform a different script every month!

Click on the photo below to visit my murder mystery website.

To get a better idea of the kind of shows we do, check out the promo video I put together for George R. R. Martin, who hired us to perform murder mysteries on his train in New Mexico. 

I've also hosted my own television series, The Theater of the Word on EWTN and I've appeared on television in a variety of roles.  Here I am as JRR Tolkien in a TV special on Tolkien's life and writing.

I have also narrated over 150 audiobooks, one of which, The Innocence of Father Brown, won the ForeWord award for best audiobook of 2009.

Writer

I've written several books and plays, and many of my plays are performed around the country.

My most popular book is An Actor Bows - Show Biz, God and the Meaning of Life, which has some excellent reviews on Amazon.

My play As the Globe Turns, a parody of a Shakespeare comedy - about a traveling Shakespearian theater troupe always one step ahead of their creditors - is written for student performers, and has been produced at high schools across the U.S.

Teacher

I began teaching back in 1987, when I was directing children's theater at a theater company in St. Louis.  I found that the published plays available for student actors were cheesy and pandering and that the Middle School and High School aged kids did not respond well to them.  

My solution - I had the students suggest their own characters and plots, and I would take their suggestions and write them into one-act plays, which the students would then perform.

Suddenly, they were eager to learn lines and excited about performing their own ideas in front of family and friends!

I have applied this technique to everything I teach.  The key to learning is interest, and to awaken what young people are interested in is the fundamental function of a teacher.

Online Courses

From 2015 to 2024 I taught online for Homeschool Connections.  In that period of time, I wrote, developed and taught 70 (seventy!) different courses.  Though I no longer teach live classes at Homeschool Connections, my recorded ones are available here.

All of my live classes, which I teach on Zoom, are now geared toward the secular homeschool market and are available at Carrier Shell Curriculum and Royal Fireworks Online Learning.

Be sure to check out the Rave Reviews of my teaching, as posted by students and teachers by clicking here.

If you have questions for me, don't hesitate to email me - classeswithkevin@gmail.com