Eustis, London, Kushner and Others to Speak at John Belluso's Memorial Service February 27

The Public Theater (Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director; Mara Manus, Executive Director) and New Dramatists (Todd London, Artistic Director; Joel Ruark, Executive Director) will hold a memorial service for the Playwright John Belluso, who died on Friday, February 10, 2006. The service will be held at The Public Theater on Monday, February 27th at 7:00 PM. It will be open to the general public.

Speakers will include Oskar Eustis, Todd London, Tony Kushner, Christopher Shinn, and Morgan Jenness, among others. There will also be a presentation of scenes from Belluso's past work including The Body of Bourne featuring Clark Middleton, Pyretown (cast TBD) and Gretty Good Time featuring Anita Hollander, among others, all directed by Lisa Peterson. The service will be followed by a reception.

John Belluso was an award-winning writer and pioneering champion for artists with disabilities and other playwrights. Born in Warwick, RI, his most current residence was Los Angeles where from 1999 to June 2005 he served as the director of the Mark Taper Forum's Other Voices Project for Disabled Theatre Artists, one of the nation's only professional developmental labs for theatre artists with disabilities. He was also affiliated with Playwrights Horizons and The Public Theater, working on newly commissioned plays for each, and with numerous prominent professional theaters that supported and produced his work including Actors Theatre of Louisville, City Theater in Pittsburgh, Geva Theatre Center in Rochester, Magic Theatre in San Francisco, Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, and Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, as well as several other New York theater companies, among them the Atlantic Theater, Keen Company and Studio Dante. He was in his final year of a seven-year residency at New Dramatists. Several of his plays will be published in forthcoming editions by Dramatists Play Service. He died at age 36 in New York City.

Belluso was an important and influential writer in emerging theater dealing with experiences of the disabled. Bound to a wheelchair since the age of 13 – due to Engelman-Camurdrie Syndrome, a non-fatal bone disorder that limits muscle strength – he often put his own experiences with disability at the center of his dramatic work. From Gretty Good Time, a dark comedy that tells the story of thirty-two-year-old Gretty, who has been forced to live her life in a nursing home after a childhood bout with polio let her paralyzed and Travelling Skin, where the worlds of early twentieth-century freak shows and late twentieth-century New Jersey converge to tell the story of Tam, a disabled young woman living in New Jersey and working as a waitress in a diner, to most recently The Rules of Charity, whose protagonist is Monty, a gay, wheelchair-bound father, Belluso used rigorous humor and historical perspective to study disability within our culture. Interviewed by the San Francisco Observer last year, he stated his enthusiasm for exploring "the idea of where disabled people fit into our society and, in a way, allowed access—both literal and metaphorical—to being a citizen."

Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis noted that "John was a brilliant playwright, a tireless advocate for the disabled, a profound thinker, and a warm and generous friend. John's great project was exploring how we depend on one another, and many of us grew to depend on him. His disability gave him a powerful understanding of how it requires a community to make us fully human, and he was a joyous participant in the life of the many communities who will mourn him. His death is a terrible loss, and we will miss him more than words can express."

"John forged community wherever he went and so became a hub for artistic activity and activism across the country," commented New Dramatists' Artistic Director Todd London. "His magnetism was born of his devotion to the truth and his passion for empowering people and artists who had been marginalized by their inabilities to easily navigate our society. He was ferocious and funny and full of a kind of light that few of us possess. It was this light that attracted people to him and illuminated the way for others. John was a beacon."

John Belluso's plays include: A Nervous Smile (produced by the Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival of New Plays), The Body of Bourne (produced by the Mark Taper Forum), Henry Flamethrowa (produced by Trinity Repertory Company, Victory Gardens Theatre and Studio Dante), The Rules of Charity (produced by the Magic Theatre), Body Songs, created with legendary theatre director Joseph Chaikin (Eugene O'Neill Center/ NPC, workshopped at the The Public Theater), Gretty Good Time (produced by the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Perishable Theatre, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Falcon Theatre) and Pyretown (commissioned and produced by Geva Theatre Center).

Awards and Honors include a National Endowment for the Arts / Theatre Communications Group Playwright-in-Residence Grant for a residency at the Atlantic Theater in New York; the AT&T On-Stage Award; the Mark Taper Forum's Sherwood Award; as well as grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Berrilla Kerr Foundation Award and honorable mention for the Kesselring Prize.

Mr. Belluso received his Bachelors and Masters degrees from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Dramatic Writing Program where he studied with Tony Kushner, John Guare, Tina Howe, and Eve Ensler, among others.

About The Public Theater

Founded by Joseph Papp as the Shakespeare Workshop and now one of the nation's preeminent cultural institutions, The Public is an American theater in which all the country's voices, rhythms, and cultures converge. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and Executive Director Mara Manus, The Public's mandate to create a theater for all New Yorkers continues to this day on stage and through its extensive outreach and education programs. Over 250,000 people annually attend Public Theater-related events at its six downtown stages including Joe's Pub, and at Shakespeare in the Park.

About New Dramatists

New Dramatists is dedicated to finding gifted playwrights and giving them the time, the space, and the tools to develop their craft, so that they can fulfill their potential and make lasting contributions to the theatre.