Jerry Cunliffe Theatrical Papers

Jerry Cunliffe, also known as Jerry Owen Cunliffe or Owen Cunliffe, began acting while at the University of Chicago in the early fifties. His professional career began in Chicago at the Playwrights Theatre and then at Second City, where he first worked with the musician and director Tom O'Horgan.

In the 1960s, after working Off-Broadway in New York and in summer stock and regional theatrical companies, Cunliffe joined O'Horgan at La Mama E.T.C. (Experimental Theatre Club). La Mama, founded by Ellen Stewart and playwright Paul Foster, was one of a number of innovative groups then pioneering the Off-Off Broadway movement. Cunliffe was a member of the La Mama Troupe, led by O'Horgan, on its path-breaking 1967 tour of Europe. In Italy, Germany, Denmark and Sweden, at the Edinburgh Festival, and finally in London, the troupe met great acclaim--and caused sensational controversy--with its productions of Rochelle Owens' Futz (a satire of American social mores in which a young farmer is persecuted for his love of a pig) and Foster's Tom Paine.

Cunliffe continued to work with O'Horgan and La Mama over the next several years--a. A-among other productions, Cunliffe performed in Tom Paine in its long Off-Broadway run, in the film production of Futz and in Foster's !Heimskringla! or, The Stoned Angels, produced by La Mama for television with an experimental video technique. In 1970 Cunliffe joined O'Horgan's New Troupe in two plays by Sam Shepard and O'Horgan's Gurton's Apocalyptic Needle. As Tom O'Horgan's work began to branch out, however, so also did Cunliffe's. Through the 1970s, Cunliffe freelanced (he appeared in Paul Foster's Elizabeth 1 in its first New York production in 1972), joining La Mama again later in the decade, when he worked with Tom O'Horgan (in plays by Brecht and Shakespeare) and Romanian director Andrei Serban.