Born August 14, 1941, in Cambridge, OH; died of cardiac arrest, May 26, 1991,in Palm Beach, FL. Writer and director. Eyen is best known for his 1981 TonyAward-winning Broadway musical Dreamgirls, based loosely on the livesof the members of the female vocal trio The Supremes. Eyen, the author of more than thirty plays, was an innovator in the 1960s Off-Off Broadway experimental theatre movement and once had four plays showing simultaneously. After receiving a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in the mid 1960s, he formedhis own company, the Theatre of the Eye. With a formula that often included strong language, daring sexual content, comedy, nudity, profanity, and socialcriticism, Eyen wrote such cult hits The Dirtiest Show in Town, TheWhite Whore and the Bit Player, Why Hanna's Skirt Won't Stay Down, Sarah B.Divine, and Women behind Bars. He also directed many of his own plays, sometimes under the names Jerome Eyen and Roger Short, Jr. In 1976 he became a writer for the television program Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
Periodicals
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