Lee Breuer
Biography
LEE BREUER (1937-2021) is a writer, director, poet, adapter, lyricist, and film-maker. He creates genre-crossing performance art, theatre, film, video, music, visual arts, poetry, literature, and opera.
After more than 10 years of making theatre in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Europe, Breuer moved to New York and co-founded Mabou Mines in 1970. He has created a unique performance genre fusing sound and musical components, visual arts, and arresting movement/dance/puppetry into a groundbreaking form – the synthesis of acting and images, of Stanislavski and Brecht, of drama and modern arts.
He has directed over 100 stage productions since 1957 (see posters below). He has taught and lectured at every elite theater institution in the U.S., and abroad in Russia, China, U.K., Ireland, France, Italy, Greece, etc., over 6 continents.
He received a Ford Foundation grant for research and teaching in East Africa, where he founded the gospel chorus program at Shangilia orphanage in Kenya.
Awards & Fellowhsip
Fellowships include MacArthur, Harvard/ Radcliffe Bunting, Ford/U.S. Artists, Bellagio, Guggenheim, McKnight, Camargo, MacDowell, and Yaddo. He has received Fulbrights to Greece and India, two Rockefeller grants for playwriting in New York, Asian Cultural Counsel Fellowships to Thailand and Myanmar, Japan-United States Friendship Commission, and a Ford Foundation grant for research and teaching in East Africa.
He has been nominated for Pulitzer, Tony, Emmy, and Grammy awards. He has directed thirteen Obie Award-winning performances, and has received Obie Awards for best play, best directing, best musical, and sustained achievement. He has been honored by the Cairo International Experimental Theater Festival, received an American Express/Kennedy Center Award for Best New American Play, an Edinburgh Herald Archangel Award for Sustained Achievement, and a Chevalier Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Works
His published works include: The Red Horse and B. Beaver Animations, Sister Suzie Cinema, The Gospel at Colonus, The Warrior Ant, Porco Morto, and Red Beads.
He has directed over 100 stage productions since 1957, among them: The Red Horse and B. Beaver Animations, The Lost Ones, A Prelude to a Death in Venice, Hai, The Shaggy Dog Animation, The Gospel at Colonus, The Warrior Ant, Mabou Mines Lear, An Epidog, Peter and Wendy, Mabou Mines Doll-House, Red Beads, Un Tramway Nommé Désir (Comédie-Française), La Divina Caricatura Part 1, and Glass Guignol: The Brother and Sister Play.
He is lyricist for the albums The Gospel at Colonus, The Warrior Ant, and Unreleased. His films include The Gospel at Colonus, Mabou Mines DollHouse, and The Book of Clarence.
Lee Breuer & The Gospel at Colonus
Click to view GOSPEL's full 1988 Broadway Playbill
Click to see the production details of 2018 GOSPEL, with photos, cast list, and links to press reviews
In 1980, Lee Breuer and Bob Telson collaborated on Sister Suzie Cinema with a cappella group Fourteen Karat Soul. After its performances at the Public Theatre (NY), a short rough version of GOSPEL was first presented as an accompanying piece in development.
1983: the full show of THE GOSPEL AT COLONUS premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in November to December (when Charlie first saw the show). It features Morgan Freeman, Clarence Fountain and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, the Original Soul Stirrers, J. D. Steele Singers, the Bob Telson Band, and the Institutional Radio Choir of Brooklyn.
1984: production at the Arena Stage in Washington D.C. running from November 23 to December 30 (and Charlie was in the rehearsal room!)
1985: runs at the American Music Theater Festival, Philadelphia, in September.
1987: production at the Alliance Theatre, Atlanta.
1988: the Gospel at Colonus opened on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre from March to May, with 61 performances and 15 previews.
The musical then toured across Europe. Breuer was nominated for the 1988 Tony Award for his book. The musical was a finalist for the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and won the 1984 Obie Award as Best Musical.
2004: production at the Apollo Theater, New York City, in October, featuring Charles S. Dutton as the Preacher, the Blind Boys of Alabama and the Legendary Soul Stirrers.
2015: production at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center, Los Angeles, by the Ebony Repertory Theatre. It was nominated for the 2015 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards for theatrical excellence.
2018: Breuer and Telson reunited most of the original 1983 BAM cast to present The Gospel at Colonus at the Delacorte Theater in New York's Central park.
See & Hear More
A musical celebration of the Life and Work of Lee Breuer, hosted at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY on June 21, 2022.
Timestamp:
1:06:00 “Sister Suzie Cinema” (lyrics by Lee Breuer, music by Bob Telson) from Sister Suzie Cinema (1980)
1:34:35 Songs from The Gospel at Colonus: “Live Where You Can,” “Lift Him Up,” “Now Let the Weeping Cease”
A Mabou Man
a 15-minute short film made for Mabou Mines’ 50th anniversary. It’s part of a full-length documentary that will be available in the near future about Lee Breuer.
L.B. trained with Jerzy Grotowski during his time in Europe before returning back to the U.S. and forming Mabou Mine. He described Grotowski's workshop as a life-changing experience that renewed his theatre/performance worldview. While we can't peek into those enlightening moments in the past, here is an 11-minute recording of the "ritual-song workshop" offered by Theatre No Theare, led by Grotowski’s artistic heir Thomas Richards.
"The writing down of words and music creates only a body. Performance brings to life a soul." L.B.