Larry Shue

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

Life and work

Shue was born in New Orleans, where his father taught drama at Tulane University. However, a large part of his childhood was spent in Eureka ( Kansas). He later moved with his family to Glen Ellyn, a small town in the west of Chicago, where he attended West High School. After his high school graduation, he began studying at the Illinois Wesleyan University, in 1968 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts successfully completed. In his final year of study 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 studies.

From 1969 to 1972, Shue served for three years in the United States Army and remained there the theater connected, so he won in 1970 an entertainment competition of the army. After his military service five years working as an actor for the Harleqin Dinner Theater in Washington and Atlanta until he accepted a position at the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre in 1977. There he continued to work as an actor, but began encouraged to write for this new pieces by John Dillion, the director of the theater, from 1979. The Nerd and The Foreigner were after its premiere at the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre will soon be successful nationally and internationally. Both were listed in New York (On ​​and Off- Broadway) and London ( West End ). In 1985 there were in the U.S. alone over 68 different productions of The Foreigner - this was the most successful year in Shue career. He worked on a film version of The Foreigner, entered into a supporting role in the feature film Sweet Liberty on, negotiated with NBC over a comedy series and had received a promise of a starring role in the Broadway musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood. At this time, as was just about to become an international star as a writer and actor, he died suddenly and unexpectedly in a plane crash 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

• Sweet Liberty