Larry Shue

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Larry Shue (born July 23, 1946 in New Orleans , Louisiana , USA; † September 23, 1985 Virginia , USA) was an American playwright and stage actor. He is best known for the two internationally successful theater plays The Nerd and The Foreigner, conceived as farce .

life and work

Shue was born in New Orleans, where his father taught drama at Tulane University . However, he spent much of his childhood in Eureka ( Kansas ). He later moved with his family to Glen Ellyn , a small town in western Chicago , and attended West High School . After graduating from high school, he began studying at Illinois Wesleyan University , which he successfully completed in 1968 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts . In his senior year Shue wrote his first two plays, the children's musical My Emperor's New Clothes and the one-act farce Grandma Duck Is Dead about his student days.

From 1969 to 1972 Shue served for three years in the United States Army and remained connected to the theater there, so in 1970 he won an army entertainment competition. After serving in the military, he worked for five years as an actor for the Harlequin Dinner Theater in Washington and Atlanta before he accepted a position at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater in 1977. There he continued to work as an actor, but from 1979 onwards, encouraged by John Dillion, the theater's director, he began to write new pieces for this. The Nerd and The Foreigner soon enjoyed national and international success after their premieres at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater . Both were performed in New York ( On and Off-Broadway ) and London ( West End ). 1985 saw over 68 different productions by The Foreigner in the United States alone - this was also the most successful year in Shue's career to date. He worked on a film version of The Foreigner , appeared in a supporting role in the feature film Sweet Liberty , negotiated a comedy series with NBC and was accepted for a lead role in the Broadway musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood . At this point, while he was in the process of becoming an international star as a writer and actor, he died suddenly in an airplane accident in Virginia.

From 1968 until their divorce in 1977, Shue was married to actress Linda Faye Wilson.

Works

  • My Emperor's New Clothes
  • Grandma Duck Is Dead (1979)
  • The Nerd (1981)
  • Wenceslas Square (1982)
  • The Foreigner (1983)

Filmography

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Playwright Larry Shue, 39, Dies in Crash: Author of Hit Comedies Was Among Victims on Downed Plane . Los Angeles Times, September 26, 1985
  2. ↑ Gerald Bordman, Thomas S. Hischak: The Oxford Companion to American Theater . Oxford University Press, 3rd Revised Edition, 2004, ISBN 0-19-516986-7 , pp. 238 , 434
  3. ^ A b Richard Christiansen: Actor Larry Shue, Comedy Playwright . Chicago Tribune, September 25, 1985
  4. ^ A b c Alan Levy: Larry Shue: Waiting in the wings . The Prague Post, May 22, 2002
  5. ↑ a b Martin Andrucki: The Nerd - A Study Guide (PDF; 185 kB). The Public Theater, October 2006, pp. 1-3
personal data
SURNAME Shue, Larry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 23, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH New Orleans , Louisiana
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 1985
Place of death Virginia