Tom Eyen
Tom Eyen (August 14, 1940 – May 26, 1991) was an American playwright, lyricist, television writer and director. He received a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Dreamgirls in 1981.
Eyen is best known for works at opposite ends of the theatrical spectrum. Mainstream theatergoers became acquainted with him in 1981, when he partnered with composer Henry Krieger and director Michael Bennett to write the book and lyrics for the hit Broadway musical Dreamgirls, about an African-American female singing trio. Eyen's career started, however, with experimental theatre that he wrote and directed Off-Off Broadway in the 1960s. This led to his Off-Broadway success with The Dirtiest Show in Town (1970), a musical revue with nudity, and Women Behind Bars (1975), a camp parody of women's prison exploitation films.[1][2] Eyen died of AIDS-related complications in Palm Beach, Florida at the age of 50.
Early life and education[edit]
Eyen was born in Cambridge, Ohio, the youngest of seven children. His parents, Abraham and Julia Eyen, owned and ran a family restaurant.[3] He attended Ohio State University but left before graduating. Eyen moved to New York City in 1960 to study acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.[4]
Career[edit]
1960 to 1970[edit]
Eyen sought acting roles without success, and worked briefly as a press agent, before he began writing for the theatre. He found an artistic home in the 1960s off-off-Broadway Experimental theatre scene, based at Caffe Cino and La MaMa Experimental Theatre Company.[5] He gave Bette Midler her first professional acting roles in Miss Nefertiti Regrets and Cinderella Revisited. Both were produced in 1965, a children's play during the daytime and an adult show by night.[6] With a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Eyen formed his own theatrical company, the Theatre of the Eye Repertory, in 1964. The company performed for a decade, and took Eyen's play about Sarah Bernhardt, Sarah B. Divine!, to the Spoleto Festival in Italy in 1967.[3] Eyen's work was central to the 1960s neo-expressionist off-off-Broadway movement. The New York Times wrote in 1984, "His plays are known for emotionally grotesque material combined with sharp satire."[7]
Eyen was prolific, writing, and usually directing, 35 plays at La MaMa alone during the 1960s and 1970s.[3] His early off-off-Broadway plays, other than those noted above, included:
Death[edit]
Eyen died of complications from AIDS in 1991, at the age of fifty, in Palm Beach, Florida. A memorial service was held at the St. James Theatre in New York City on September 23, 1991. In 1993, Eyen posthumously received the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute Award from Ohio State University, where his papers are archived.[29]