Stuart Gordon, Broom Street Theater founder and horror movie icon, dies at 72 – Madison.com

The so-called nude Peter Pan was an updating based on his experiences getting beat up by the cops in Chicago during the convention, Levitan said. He turned Captain Hook into Mayor Daley and the pirates into the cops. Tinker Bells pixie dust became LSD. Among the performers was AndrDe Shields, who would go on to acclaim as a Tony Award-winning star on Broadway.

After its debut performance in the Fredric March Play Circle, university officials locked Gordons company out of the theater, and the final performances were staged in Ingraham Hall. Gordon and Carolyn Purdy, his then-girlfriend and future wife of 50 years, who was one of the dancers, were arrested by Madison police on obscenity charges, but the charges were later dropped.

When UW officials demanded that a university professor oversee all of his future productions, Gordon and Purdy went off-campus to found Broom Street Theater. They staged a risqu version of the Greek drama Lysistrata in the spring of 1969, but Levitan said Gordon clashed with some of the actors and left the company soon after.

Graduating in 1970 and moving back to Chicago, Gordon founded the Organic Theater Company, where he produced some groundbreaking theater in the 1970s, such as the first productions of David Mamets Sexual Perversity in Chicago and Bleacher Bums, launching the careers of actors like Joe Mantegna, George Wendt and William H. Macy.

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Stuart Gordon, Broom Street Theater founder and horror movie icon, dies at 72 - Madison.com

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