Harry Kondoleon

Harry Kondoleon was a playwright, poet, and novelist. After graduating from the Yale School of Drama, he moved to New York to pursue theatre.

Kondoleon’s best-known plays include Christmas On Mars, The  Vampires, Zero Positive, Slacks and Tops, The  Fairy Garden, The Cote  D’Azur Triangle, The Brides, Rococo, The Poets’ Corner,  Anteroom, Play  Yourself, Love Diatribe, The Houseguests, and Saved or Destroyed.  His plays have been performed at theaters across the country and  around the world, and they have  earned him two Obie Awards, the  Oppenheimer/Newsday Award, and a Drama-Logue  Award. In addition, he has  received Fulbright, Rockefeller, NEA, and Guggenheim  fellowships.

Several of his plays were published by Theater Communications  Group in an anthology entitled Self  Torture and Strenuous Exercise. He is also the author of a volume of  poetry, The Death of Understanding,  and two novels, The Whore of Tjampuan and Diary of a Lost Boy. The latter was  published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1994, two months before Harry Kondoleon died of  complications from AIDS.

• “Early on, Mr. Kondoleon makes good on his promise to transport us to the outer - or inner -space of his special sensibility. As in ''Slacks and Tops,'' his one-act play at the Manhattan Theater Club this spring, this writer shows unusual promise.”

  — Frank Rich, New York Times | Read Full Article