Skip to main content

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 Royal Fireworks Online Learning.




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

Popular posts from this blog

Rave Reviews!

"I cannot tell you what a difference your class has made this semester for [my daughter]. She came downstairs the other day and said, 'I'm so sad that Mr. O'Brien's class is over.'  This semester I watched some of your classes with [my daughter] because she'd say, 'Mom, you're going to love this!  Pull up a chair!' You are an outstanding teacher ... We are so grateful for your impact on my daughter's life,"  "We love Mr. O'Brien!! Our son is really enjoying his class this semester. Thank you so much!"  You are so very real and down to earth, so spontaneous. You're not afraid to just be who you are. You are alive and that's what your students love. Of course you can throw in a great sense of humor and intelligence to boot. Thank you for drawing all your friends more deeply into the mysteries of life. We can't help but think about the deeper things, the most important things in life...you lead us ...
Read more

Speech, Debate and Communications

  Students will learn the fundamentals of spoken communication in this two semester course.  The  focus will be threefold: study, theory and application. The “Study” component will focus on the greatest speeches and debates in history, from the “Apology” of Socrates to “I Have a Dream” and beyond.  These famous speeches and debates will be analyzed from the perspective of argumentation, structure and rhetorical devices, forming the theoretical basis for in-class application. The “Application” of what we learn will consist of several speeches and debates that will be conducted live in class.  Students will present individual speeches and will engage in two-person debates.  Students will be coached in how to avoid common errors, such as saying “like” as a filler word, how to speak extemporaneously when called upon (particularly in an oral exam) and how to be effective and engaging when addressing an audience. FALL: 15 Sessions - Tuesdays at 8:00 am Pacific; 9...
Read more