Paul McCabe '04 was an atypical student. He entered Ithaca College in his 30s, traversed campus in a wheelchair,and became an award-winning playwright. Get Off, his semi-autobiographical work dramatizing a young man's adjustment to disability, won the Jean Kennedy Smith Award at this year's Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

McCabe, an English major and writing minor, wrote Get Off as an independent study project in his senior year. The process began when he approached associate professor of English Claire Gleitman for help narrowing a research topic. "He initially wanted to study plays on disability, but we looked and didn't find many," she said. "Even when we broadened the theme to include immobility as a metaphor, we were still frustrated. There just were not that many plays on the subject." That's when McCabe, who was paralyzed in a fall at age 22, decided to write his own play on the subject. Gleitman was at first reluctant, but she yielded to his enthusiasm about the work. "I tend to be a skeptic, but as it evolved, I was more and more awestruck," she said. "About halfway through, I thought, 'This is spectacular theater.'"

After a staged reading by Ithaca's On the Verge theater group, a performance at SUNY Cortland, and an encore performance at Ithaca, McCabe submitted his play to the Kennedy Center competition and won. The Jean Kennedy Smith Award came with a $2,500 cash prize and a fellowship to a prestigious playwriting program. As part of the award celebration, a scene from Get Off was staged at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

McCabe has submitted Get Off into other competitions, and several theater groups are reviewing it for production. But he's not resting on his laurels. He's busy on another writing project, fitting the work into a hectic schedule that includes instructing English at Tompkins Cortland Community College and studying for a master's degree at SUNY Binghamton. McCabe credits Ithaca professors for helping him to hone his craft. "[Assistant professor of writing] Sally Parr was especially helpful," McCabe said. "We agreed that the best writing anyone can do comes from the most uncomfortable place. She has an intangible way of making the ghosts become family—treating and dissecting them honestly on the written page."