Stage Voices

H. M. Koutoukas, a prolific playwright who helped
create Off Off Broadway theater in the 1960s with a wildly surreal style of
drama, died on March 6 at his home in Manhattan. He was 72.

The cause was complications of diabetes, Magie
Dominic, a friend, said.

Mr. Koutoukas, known as Harry, specialized in
absurdist plays that he called “camps.” In works like “Medea in the Laundromat”
and “Awful People Are Coming Over So We Must Be Pretending to Be Hard at Work
and Hope They Will Go Away,” he presented cartoonishly stylized characters,
equipped them with arch dialogue and set them loose in outlandish situations.
He obeyed no rules but those that one of his characters called “the ancient laws
of glitter.”

(Read more)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/arts/18koutoukas.html

(What follows is from the Village Voice, 3/16.)

A
Memorial for H.M. "Harry" Koutoukas

A
memorial for playwright H.M. "Harry"
Koutoukas will be held on Sunday March 28, at 2 p.m. at Judson
Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South.

(Read
more)

http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-03-16/theater/a-memorial-for-h-m-harry-koutoukas/

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