 | This biography of a living person includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(January 2024) |
Victor Bumbalo | |
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| Born | November 30, 1948 |
| Occupation(s) | Playwright, screenwriter |
Victor Bumbalo (born November 30, 1948) is an American actor and playwright.
Bumbalo graduated from the Masters Program in Theater at Bennington College. In New York City, Bumbalo became immersed in the Off- and Off-Off Broadway theater scene. He directed the American premiere of Mrozek's The Enchanted Night and became the artistic director of the Soul and Latin Theater, one of the first successful street theaters. Their productions toured the streets of New York for four consecutive summers.
As a gay man, he felt the need to put the lives of gay people on the stage. He wrote Kitchen Duty, produced by John Glines. Then came Niagara Falls, a comedy about a working-class family's reaction to their gay son and his lover arriving unexpectedly for his sister's wedding. This play has enjoyed a long life, playing in both mainstream and alternative theaters.
In the 1980s he received two MacDowell Fellowships and a Yaddo and Helene Wurlitzer Residency.
Then the era of AIDS began. Almost everyone involved with Kitchen Duty died of the disease. Bumbalo volunteered with GMHC where he headed a team that took care of people with AIDS. He worked with the Anti-Violence Project and tried to avoid writing. Finally, confronting his demons, an award from the Ingram Merrill Foundation allowed him to complete Adam And The Experts, his first play dealing with AIDS. It was loosely based on his relationship with his friend, the novelist and journalist, George Whitmore, and their search for a way out of the nightmare. The New York Times said of the play "it is the most important play to deal with the AIDS crisis in gay society since William Hoffman's As Is and Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart." After the successful Off-Broadway run the play has had numerous productions in the United States, England, and Canada.
What Are Tuesdays Like? follows a set of strangers in the waiting room of an AIDS clinic over several months. Bumbalo was able to expand the world of HIV and deal with issues of class, gender, and race. The play was featured at the Carnegie Mellon Showcase of New Plays and premiered at the Contemporary American Theater Festival. The play has had productions throughout the United States, Germany, Japan, England, Costa Rica, and Sweden.
In 1995, David Milch, executive producer of NYPD Blue, having seen a reading of What Are Tuesdays Like?, invited Bumbalo to write an episode for his series. He moved from New York to Los Angeles.
The success of his NYPD Blue episode led to a staff writing position on American Gothic. Since then he has written several movies of the week and a number of episodes for network television series. In addition, Bumbalo wrote for HBO's animated series Spawn.
Questa opened at the Court Theatre in Los Angeles. The play was produced by David Milch and starred Wendie Malick, Dan Lauria, and Dorian Harewood. It was a 2007 finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Margo Jefferson, Pulitzer Prize–winning critic said of the play "it is a wonder ... the talents of Victor Bumbalo—the comic charm, the moral courage, the range of characters—are in perfect accord.
Bumbalo has served on the playwriting committee for the Massachusetts State Arts Council. Most of Bumbalo's plays are published. Show, Tell, Kitchen Duty, and After Eleven appear in various anthologies. Show can also be found in Applause's collection of Best American Short Plays. Adam And The Experts, Niagara Falls, What Are Tuesdays Like?, and Questa are published by Broadway Play Publishing Inc.
Most recently he wrote and directed a short film, Two Boys. It has appeared in many festivals throughout the United States and won the Jury Award for Best Drama at the Beverly Hills Shorts Festival (2011) and Best Director at the ITN Distribution Film Festival (2012).
Outside of his theatre work, Bumbalo also appeared in an ad campaign for "Orgy of the Living Dead," a theatrical reissue package created by Europix International in the early 70s combining the films Kill, Baby, Kill , The Murder Clinic , and Malenka under new titles and in abbreviated edits. Bumbalo appeared in the trailer and promotional ads as "John Austin Frazier", a man who was driven to insanity as a result of viewing the triple feature of "Living Dead" films. The campaign was created by his friend and future writer/director Alan Ormsby.
Bumbalo, Victor (2010) What Are Tuesdays Like? Broadway Play Pub ISBN 978-0-88145-418-5
Bumbalo, Victor (2007) Niagara Falls Broadway Play Pub ISBN 978-0-88145-365-2
Edgar Montillion "Monty" Woolley was an American film and theater actor. At the age of 50, he achieved a measure of stardom for his role in the 1939 stage play The Man Who Came to Dinner and its 1942 film adaptation. His distinctive white beard was his trademark and he was affectionately known as "The Beard."
Simon Phillip Hugh Callow is an English actor. Known as a character actor on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades including an Olivier Award and Screen Actors Guild Award as well as nominations for two BAFTA Awards. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to acting by Queen Elizabeth II in 1999.
Joseph Papp was an American theatrical producer and director. He established The Public Theater in what had been the Astor Library Building in Lower Manhattan. There Papp created a year-round producing home to focus on new plays and musicals. Among numerous examples of these were the works of David Rabe, Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Charles Gordone's No Place to Be Somebody, and Papp's production of Michael Bennett's Pulitzer Prize–winning musical A Chorus Line. Papp also founded Shakespeare in the Park, helped to develop other off-Broadway theatres and worked to preserve the historic Broadway Theatre District.
Laurence David Kramer was an American playwright, author, film producer, public health advocate, and gay rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to London, where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for the film Women in Love (1969) and received an Academy Award nomination for his work.
Joseph Mantello is an American actor and director known for his work on stage and screen. He first gained prominence for his Broadway acting debut in the original production of Tony Kushner's two-part epic play Angels in America (1993–1994), for which he received a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play nomination. He has since acted in acclaimed Broadway revivals of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart (2011) and Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie (2017).
Thing-Fish is an album by American musician Frank Zappa, originally released as a triple album box set on Barking Pumpkin Records in 1984. It was billed as a cast recording for a proposed musical of the same name, which was ultimately not produced by Zappa, but later performed partially in 2003, ten years after his death.
Sarah Miriam Schulman is an American novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, gay activist, and AIDS historian. She holds an endowed chair in nonfiction at Northwestern University and is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities. She is a recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award and the Lambda Literary Award.
The Boys in the Band is a 1968 American play by Mart Crowley. The play premiered Off-Broadway, and was revived on Broadway for its 50th anniversary in 2018. The play revolves around a group of gay men who gather for a birthday party in New York City, and was groundbreaking for its portrayal of gay life. It was adapted into two feature films in 1970 and 2020.
The Normal Heart is a largely autobiographical play by Larry Kramer. It focuses on the rise of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York City between 1981 and 1984, as seen through the eyes of writer/activist Ned Weeks, the gay founder of a prominent HIV advocacy group. The play's title comes from W. H. Auden's poem, "September 1, 1939".
Robert Chesley was a playwright, theater critic and musical composer.
Deathtrap is a 1978 American play written by Ira Levin with many plot twists and which refers to itself as a play within a play. It is in two acts with one set and five characters. It holds the record for the longest-running comedy-thriller on Broadway, and was nominated for four Tony Awards, including Best Play. Deathtrap was well received by many and has been frequently revived. It was adapted into a film starring Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve and Dyan Cannon in 1982.
Falsettos is a sung-through musical with a book by William Finn and James Lapine, and music and lyrics by Finn. The musical consists of March of the Falsettos (1981) and Falsettoland (1990), the last two installments in a trio of one-act musicals that premiered off-Broadway. The story centers on Marvin, who has left his wife to be with a male lover, Whizzer, and struggles to keep his family together. Much of the first act explores the impact his relationship with Whizzer has had on his family. The second act explores family dynamics that evolve as he and his ex-wife plan his son's bar mitzvah, which is complicated as Whizzer comes down with an early case of AIDS. Central to the musical are the themes of Jewish identity, gender roles, and gay life in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Theatre Rhinoceros, Theatre Rhino, or The Rhino is a gay and lesbian theatre in San Francisco. Theatre Rhinoceros claims to be the world's longest-running professional queer theatre company. It was founded in the spring of 1977 by Lanny Baugniet and his late partner Allan B. Estes, Jr.. The name is based on the lavender rhinoceros, a symbol popularized by the Boston gay community in the mid-1970s. It is a non-profit theater company dedicated to the production of plays by and about gay and lesbian people.
As Is is a 1985 American play written by William M. Hoffman. The play was first produced by Circle Repertory Company and The Glines and directed by Marshall W. Mason. It opened on March 10, 1985 at the Circle Rep in New York City, where it ran for 49 performances.
John Glines was an American playwright and theater producer. He won a Tony Award and multiple Drama Desk Awards during his producing career.
Scott McPherson was an American playwright. He was influential as one of the first openly gay playwrights when AIDs was severely impacting the nation.
The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant is a non-fiction book by Dan Savage. It was first published by Dutton in 1999. The book recounts the author's experiences during the process of adopting a child with his partner, Terry. Savage details for the reader his emotional states at various times during the adoption period and how it affected his life.
The Marlborough Pub and Theatre is a historic venue, situated at 4 Princes Street, Brighton. It has been associated, since the 1970s, with the LGBT community. The Marlborough's small theatre presents drama, cabaret and music throughout the year, including during the Brighton Fringe Festival, LGBT History Month and Brighton Pride Arts Festival. The pub reopened in 2021 as 'The Actors'.
Henry M. Tavera was an AIDS activist, artistic director, and archivist based in the Mission District of San Francisco, California; his 1979 move to the region put him at the forefront of the AIDS epidemic via his involvement in various HIV/AIDS service organizations as well as AIDS theatre. He also did work around Chicano Gay Activism and teaching/advising. Tavera died on February 27, 2000, at 56 years old from kidney cancer.
Michael Bradford is an American playwright who is a professor at the University of Connecticut and former artistic director of the Connecticut Repertory Theatre. In 2021, the Connecticut chapter of the NAACP named Bradford one of the "100 Most Influential Blacks in the State of Connecticut."
http://bavabook.blogspot.com/2007/05/john-austin-frazier-unmasked.html http://monstermemories.blogspot.com/2010/04/orgy-of-living-dead.html
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