Hollye Levin’s decision to become a playwright was as easy as falling off a cliff—literally! In fact it was that life-changing fall and the months and months of recovery and rehab that turned her focus from music and touring to penning plays. "I thought my life and music career were over after that life-altering accident, but as fate would have it, it ended up opening a whole new world for me,” says the St. Louis native who fled the farmland to pursue a musical career in Los Angeles. After a stint at the UCLA School of Music, and playing local gigs in her spare time, her original material

and unique brand of story telling captured the attention of various producers. The green-eye girl from the Midwest was suddenly touring and opening for such blues greats as Muddy Waters and Sonny Terry and folk/pop/jazz artists Tom Waits and Billy Joel.

 

Always armed with a notebook that she fills with honest, real -life observations and little girl in the big city ideas, Levin was laying the groundwork not only for the songs she would sing, but the plays that would later come. Though she always dreamed of writing plays one day, she knew she had to first fulfill her rock ‘n' roll dreams.

 

“I used to think that I’ll try my hand at play writing when I get the rock ‘n roll thing out of my system,”she recalls. “The material was always there--going as far back to my rather unorthodox childhood—to being the Midwest farmer’s daughter who was suddenly hanging out with Billy Joel and Frank Zappa in between sipping champagne and eating caviar at The Polo Lounge. I was living every artist’s dream.”

 

After the accident, she turned her acerbic wit and watchful eye to comedy. Her first play, THE POLO LOUNGE, A TRUE STORY captured the ironic humor intrinsic to the famous Beverly Hills watering hole from the tell-it-like-it-is point of view of a 19-year-old outsider in Levis, tennis shoes and a button-down shirt. Among her first fans was director Rob Reiner, who after seeing her first showcase, told her, “You’re crazy not to finish this and turn it into a full-length play...You are f**king hysterical, a cross between Tennessee Williams and Neil Simon."