The New York Times has reported that award-winning director and writer Lee Breuer died January 3 at his home in Brooklyn Heights. Born Feb. 6, 1937, in Philadelphia, he studied English at UCLA, where he began to write plays and met his future wife, Ruth Maleczech. After college, the couple worked with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, among other companies, but eventually left the Bay Area and settled in New York.
In 1970, they cofounded Mabou Mines, with composer Philip Glass, director JoAnne Akalaitis, and performer David Warrilow. Another early collaborator was composer Bob Telson, with whom Breuer created the “doo-wop opera” Sister Suzie Cinema. The show premiered Off-Broadway in 1980 at the Public Theater, where several Mabou Mines productions were presented, and was broadcast at part of the PBS series Alive from Off Center in 1986, which you can watch below.
Breuer’s best-known work with Telson is The Gospel at Colonus. Set in the context of a black Pentecostal service, the musical is a retelling of the ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles, featuring a gospel choir. The musical premiered Nov. 8, 1983, in BAM’s inaugural Next Wave Festival, winning an Obie for best musical and being named a finalist for the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The show opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in 1988 and ran for 61 performances on Broadway, earning Breuer a Tony nomination for best book, which he refused. In 2018, most of the original cast reunited for a limited-run Off-Broadway revival. Below is the 1985 PBS Great Performances broadcast of the show, featuring Morgan Freeman.
https://youtu.be/TgG0igiRSuI
Breuer’s other musical work with Telson includes the “mock epic poem” The Warrior Ant, which premiered at BAM in 1988, and the songs “How Shall I See You Through My Tears” in the 2003 film Camp (which you can watch below, performed by Sasha Allen and Steven Cutts) and “Brenda, Brenda” in the 1987 film Bagdad Café, which was adapted as a stage musical in 2004.