[1] O'Keefe wrote Shimmer after financial restrictions ended his plans for a five-actor play that had been commissioned, by American Inroads in San Francisco, in 1987.
O'Keefe, who was born in Iowa, was first sent to live in juvenile detention homes at the age of 7, after his mother was declared unfit to care for him.
"Gliding and shadowboxing around the stage, Mr. O'Keefe physically re-enacts fights and confrontations with an edgy ferocity that feels so spontaneous one can almost forget the fact that [it] ... has been carefully rehearsed.
And at key emotional moments, Mr. O'Keefe's speaking voice shades into song.... [This] is bravura storytelling that etches itself on the mind.
With an eerie intuitive power, the show captures the strangeness and sensuality, the loneliness and precious consolations of growing up afraid.
O'Keefe also adapted Shimmer into a screenplay with multiple characters, and it was made into an independent film by American Playhouse in 1993, as the true story of a friendship between two boys from a juvenile home.