Gordon Myles Rogoff

Gordon Rogoff passed away on Friday, January 26, in New York City. Critic, director, editor and teacher, he was one of the most accomplished writers about theater actors and support of what he described proudly as "the playwright as thinker." He and his late husband, painter and playwright Morton Lichter, were together more than 60 years, sharing homes together in Manhattan, Massachusetts, Italy and their beloved Ireland.

Gordon was born on May 17, 1931, in Sunnyside Queens, in the city that would forever be his primary home and center of personal and professional worlds. After graduating from Yale College in the Class of 1952, Gordon trained in London at the Central School of Speech and Drama. His career in the theater spanned many roles and endeavors, beginning with acting, appearing in the US premieres of The Bald Soprano and Jack by Eugene Ionesco. He became part of acting history while serving as administrative director of the Actors' Studio, working with Lee Strasberg, Cheryl Crawford and Elia Kazan. He served as dramaturg for theater companies in New York and abroad, including at the Open Theatre with Joseph Chaikin. He was also known as a director, of premiering works by María Irene Fornés, Terrence McNally, Susan Yankowitz, and Morton Lichter.

Gordon met Morton in the early 1960s in New York, and the two were together ever since, sharing an apartment on west 96th street and traveling the world together, teaching, writing, gardening and hosting family and friends. The two finally married in 2015, following what Gordon described as "a long elopement."

Gordon authored more than 200 reviews and articles for publications such as The New Republic, The Nation, The Commonweal, The Saturday Review, The Village Voice, Performing Arts Journal, The Drama Review, American Theatre, Yale Review, Theater, and Yale Theater Magazine, and many others. His published collections are Vanishing Acts: Theater Since the Sixties and Theatre is Not Safe: Theatre Criticism 1962-1986. He also served as an editor of Encore (London), Theater Arts Monthly, Tulane Drama Review, and Yale Theater Magazine, as well as on the staffs of The Village Voice and American Theatre.

His awards and honors included an Obie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Directing for Mort's play, "Old Timer's Sexual Symphony," which was performed first in the US and later in Florence, Italy, to help commemorate the American bicentennial. He was also the recipient of the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award in Criticism from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Ford Foundation Fellowships, and a Rockefeller Foundation Grant.

Meanwhile, his passion for education and development of new generations of theater professionals continued alongside his individual accomplishments. In 1966, Yale School of Drama Dean Robert Brustein recruited Gordon to serve as Associate Dean and reshape the School of Drama as a professional conservatory. After serving at Yale, he also held positions at SUNY Buffalo and Brooklyn College. In 1986, he returned to Yale, and later became the Professor Emeritus of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism, where he served until he was 88 years old.

While Mort passed in January of 2020, Gordon leaves behind a loving family, including the LuBell family: nephew Richard LuBell, his wife Renee LuBell and their children Caitlyn and Braden LuBell; Kerri LuBell and Glen Nelson (passed) and their children

Kaja Nelson and Stina-Lisa Nelson; nephew Tim LuBell (passed), his widow and Barbara Morse-LuBell, and their children Avery, Kira and Mirise LuBell; and a broad network of friends, former students, theater contemporaries and avid readers from around the world. His wit, passion, deftness for one-liners, boundless well of appreciation for the gifts of theater and classical music, and inimitable charm will be missed and remembered in the years to come.