Lee Breuer, a cofounder of New York’s groundbreaking experimental theater company Mabou Mines and writer of Broadway’s Pulitzer Prize finalist The Gospel at Colonus, died Sunday at his home in New York. He was 83.
His death was announced by Mabou Mines. A cause was not specified, but the company noted that Breuer died peacefully at home surrounded by loved ones.
A seminal figure in American avant-garde theater, Breuer, along with composer Philip Glass, director JoAnne Akalaitis, and actors Ruth Maleczech and David Warrilow, cofounded Mabou Mines in 1970. The theater company, named after the town in Nova Scotia where Glass and Akalaitis had a home, would become a force in New York’s downtown experimental arts scene that continues to this day.
The company’s best-known work, The Gospel at Colonus, was a gospel music adaptation of Sophocles’s tragedy Oedipus at Colonus set in a Black Pentecostal church.
His death was announced by Mabou Mines. A cause was not specified, but the company noted that Breuer died peacefully at home surrounded by loved ones.
A seminal figure in American avant-garde theater, Breuer, along with composer Philip Glass, director JoAnne Akalaitis, and actors Ruth Maleczech and David Warrilow, cofounded Mabou Mines in 1970. The theater company, named after the town in Nova Scotia where Glass and Akalaitis had a home, would become a force in New York’s downtown experimental arts scene that continues to this day.
The company’s best-known work, The Gospel at Colonus, was a gospel music adaptation of Sophocles’s tragedy Oedipus at Colonus set in a Black Pentecostal church.
- 1/4/2021
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Can an old-fashioned monster movie still work in the 1980s? The dedicated cast for this overachieving chiller takes its story of ‘Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers’ in directions most punk-era horrors do not.
C.H.U.D.
Blu-ray
Arrow Video (U.S.)
1984 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 96 + 88 min. / Street Date November 22, 2016 / Available from Amazon Us 39.99
Starring John Heard, Daniel Stern, Christopher Curry, Kim Greist, Eddie Jones, Ruth Maleczech, J.C. Quinn, John Ramsey, George Martin, John Bedford Lloyd, Frankie Faison, John Goodman, Hallie Foote, Jon Polito.
Cinematography Peter Stein
Editor Claire Simpson
Makeup Effects John Caglione Jr.
Original Music David A. Hughes
Written by Parnell Hall, Shepard Abbott
Produced by Andrew Bonime
Directed by Douglas Cheek
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
How does the monster show C.H.U.D. rate in the general parade of 1980s horror features? I don’t know — I spent the ’80s avoiding those pictures. A few years earlier at the New Beverly, Sherman Torgan...
C.H.U.D.
Blu-ray
Arrow Video (U.S.)
1984 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 96 + 88 min. / Street Date November 22, 2016 / Available from Amazon Us 39.99
Starring John Heard, Daniel Stern, Christopher Curry, Kim Greist, Eddie Jones, Ruth Maleczech, J.C. Quinn, John Ramsey, George Martin, John Bedford Lloyd, Frankie Faison, John Goodman, Hallie Foote, Jon Polito.
Cinematography Peter Stein
Editor Claire Simpson
Makeup Effects John Caglione Jr.
Original Music David A. Hughes
Written by Parnell Hall, Shepard Abbott
Produced by Andrew Bonime
Directed by Douglas Cheek
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
How does the monster show C.H.U.D. rate in the general parade of 1980s horror features? I don’t know — I spent the ’80s avoiding those pictures. A few years earlier at the New Beverly, Sherman Torgan...
- 11/26/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
The company releases an official statement on their Facebook page, saying 'We at Mabou Mines are profoundly saddened to share the news of the passing of our Co-Founder amp Co-Artistic Director, Ruth Maleczech. Ruth died at home, in her sleep, with her children Clove amp Lute at her side. Ruth was a living legend. The loss to the theater community is immeasurable. To those of us who knew and loved her the loss is devastating.'...
- 10/1/2013
- by BWW News Desk
- BroadwayWorld.com
Sundance Institute at BAM returns to the Brooklyn Academy of Music from May 31-June 10, featuring award-winning feature and short films, live performances and panel discussions.
The series opens with The Savages, Tamara Jenkins' comic drama starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Laura Linney and Philip Bosco.
This year's dramatic features include Tom DiCillo's Delirious, Sterlin Harjo's Four Sheets to the Wind, JJ Lask's On the Road With Judas, Christopher Zalla's Padre Nuestro, Jeffrey Blitz's Rocket Science, David Gordon Green's Snow Angels and Dror Shaul's Sweet Mud.
The series also will highlight musical performances by Ljova, the Blue Jackets with Bradford Reed, Rhythm Republik and Sussan Deyhim. New York-based theater company Mabou Mines will perform selections from "Song for New York: What Women Do While Men Sit Knitting," directed by Ruth Maleczech, which is scheduled for full production in September.
The closing weekend will feature Barbara Kopple's Shut Up & Sing, Raoul Peck's Lumumba and Nick Broomfield's Soldier Girls, followed by a discussion on social issues and documentary filmmaking.
The full program for the Sundance Institute at BAM will be announced in April.
The series opens with The Savages, Tamara Jenkins' comic drama starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Laura Linney and Philip Bosco.
This year's dramatic features include Tom DiCillo's Delirious, Sterlin Harjo's Four Sheets to the Wind, JJ Lask's On the Road With Judas, Christopher Zalla's Padre Nuestro, Jeffrey Blitz's Rocket Science, David Gordon Green's Snow Angels and Dror Shaul's Sweet Mud.
The series also will highlight musical performances by Ljova, the Blue Jackets with Bradford Reed, Rhythm Republik and Sussan Deyhim. New York-based theater company Mabou Mines will perform selections from "Song for New York: What Women Do While Men Sit Knitting," directed by Ruth Maleczech, which is scheduled for full production in September.
The closing weekend will feature Barbara Kopple's Shut Up & Sing, Raoul Peck's Lumumba and Nick Broomfield's Soldier Girls, followed by a discussion on social issues and documentary filmmaking.
The full program for the Sundance Institute at BAM will be announced in April.
- 3/23/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
"Mondo Plympton" is a feature-length anthology of the animated shorts of Bill Plympton, whose work has been oft-showcased in previous collections. Containing animated shorts, drawings, commercials and excerpts from both his first animated feature film ("The Tune") and his upcoming live-action release ("I Married a Strange Person"), it is a forceful argument for the idea that some things are better in small doses.
Plympton's work, which he draws entirely on his own, often takes off on the fragility and malleability of the human form via a unique brand of physical punning. His Oscar-nominated short, "Your Face", presents a singer whose face becomes endlessly contorted in various permutations, while "Push Comes to Shove" presents a physical duel between two men that is carried to hilarious extremes. In "Nosehair", a man struggles with the title subject, which reaches monstrous proportions, and in "How to Kiss", a couple engage in kissing maneuvers that can only be carried out in animation.
Unfortunately, a little of this goes a long way, and the film is not helped by the inclusion of some less-than-stellar items in Plympton's oeuvre, as well as a pretentious narration in which the animator details his career with the seriousness of a Nobel Prize winner. Visually, too, Plympton's shimmering drawings lack the variety needed to sustain a feature-length effort. Still, his is a unique and darkly comic vision, and those for whom his work is less familiar will no doubt take much pleasure here.
MONDO PLYMPTON
Director-producer-screenplay Bill Plympton
Co-writers Peter Vey, Maureen McElheron
Directors of photography Gary Dealer,
F-Stop Studio, Andrew Wilson, John Schnall, John Donnelly, Metropolis
Graphics Bob Lyons
Editors June Altschuler, Stephen Barr,
Merrill Sterns, Nico Sheers, Holly Fadson
Music Timothy Clark, Maureen McElheron,
Damian Boucher, Chac-Mul
Color/stereo
Vocals: Ruth Maleczech, Chris Hoffman, Maureen McElheron, Daniel Kaufman, Bill Plympton
Running time -- 80 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Plympton's work, which he draws entirely on his own, often takes off on the fragility and malleability of the human form via a unique brand of physical punning. His Oscar-nominated short, "Your Face", presents a singer whose face becomes endlessly contorted in various permutations, while "Push Comes to Shove" presents a physical duel between two men that is carried to hilarious extremes. In "Nosehair", a man struggles with the title subject, which reaches monstrous proportions, and in "How to Kiss", a couple engage in kissing maneuvers that can only be carried out in animation.
Unfortunately, a little of this goes a long way, and the film is not helped by the inclusion of some less-than-stellar items in Plympton's oeuvre, as well as a pretentious narration in which the animator details his career with the seriousness of a Nobel Prize winner. Visually, too, Plympton's shimmering drawings lack the variety needed to sustain a feature-length effort. Still, his is a unique and darkly comic vision, and those for whom his work is less familiar will no doubt take much pleasure here.
MONDO PLYMPTON
Director-producer-screenplay Bill Plympton
Co-writers Peter Vey, Maureen McElheron
Directors of photography Gary Dealer,
F-Stop Studio, Andrew Wilson, John Schnall, John Donnelly, Metropolis
Graphics Bob Lyons
Editors June Altschuler, Stephen Barr,
Merrill Sterns, Nico Sheers, Holly Fadson
Music Timothy Clark, Maureen McElheron,
Damian Boucher, Chac-Mul
Color/stereo
Vocals: Ruth Maleczech, Chris Hoffman, Maureen McElheron, Daniel Kaufman, Bill Plympton
Running time -- 80 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/25/1997
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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