Larry Loonin

Larry Loonin (born January 5, 1941) is an American theater director, playwright and actor from Brooklyn, New York

Work

He was Off-Off in the early 60’s, for the ground breaking productions of The Living Theater. Larry was in the audience when they did Tonight We Improvise, Many Loves, Man is Man, and The Connection. Eventually he was a prisoner in their production of The Brig. Larry directed Pantagleize by Ghelderode at the Judson, perhaps the first full length play produced off-off Broadway. He also directed The Hundred and First, created a number of movement pieces, played the lead in Al Carmines’staging of The Sightseer, and ran lights for a number of shows, when he wasn’t accepting reservations at Judson’s door. He was a member of the acting company in William Ball’s OBIE winning production of Six Character’s in Search of an Author, first presented at the Martinque Theater. Loonin later created Happenings at the Martinque for a four month run. At the Caffe Cino he directed Hello Out There by William Saroyan. He worked with Yvonne Rainer on the notable event called Incidents. His script, Run to the Sea, inspired by the writings of William Carlos William, was produced there. When in the mood, he presented The Commercial Fisherman and Buying and Selling between the nine and eleven o’clock shows. At LaMaMa, Larry directed Arthur Sainer’s Van Gogh and staged his own movement piece, Why Do Things Take Such A Long Time? At the Spencer Memorial Church and Café-Au-go-go later created events first known as Our First Gobi Fossils, but later known as Happenings. Larry also worked with Kurt Vonnegut on Penelope, serving as the stage manager for the first production. He also stage managed Moon For the Misbegotten at Circle in the Square.
During the mid 60’s, Larry taught at the funky Franconia College where he staged an outdoor production of the Iliad and produced The Franconia Summer Festival. He returned to NYC towards the end of the 60’s to direct Stockard Channing and Jill Clayburgh in the Wax Museum at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. For brief periods of time Larry was a critic at The Village Voice, The Brooklyn Heights Press, The Guardian, and was the Drama Editor at the Boston Phoenix for a season. In the early 70’s while teaching at Emerson College, he co-foundered the Charlestown Working Theater and serving as Artistic Director (5 years) created a number of original scripts with working class themes. The theater is still going strong 38 years later. During the mid 70’s Larry created a coffee-house theater called the UZ Company of Boston where plays that were first done at the Caffe Cino were recreated. Larry returned to NYC in the 80’s to become the Director of the Theater Program at Lehman College. He directed many plays off-Broadway during this time including Inserts which opened the Samuel Beckett Theater with Kevin O’Conner in the lead. He is particularly proud of his adaptation of Christopher Logue’s, War Music, based on the Iliad, and was produced at the Vortex Theater.
Larry has acted in many Hollywood and Independent films as well as running roles on the soaps and nighttime TV. He was James Whitmore’s son in the Golden Honeymoon. He was the manager of the NY Yankees in The Scout. He shared the title role with Bill Raymond in Yvonne Rainer’s The Man Who Envied Women. On the soaps he did 13 weeks on Another World as well as featured roles in Ryan’s Hope and Loving. Larry had an ADR group that worked on a number of Hollywood films including The Untouchables. Recently he had a role on Rescue Me (FX) where he played a retired fireman.

Personal Life

He’s been married to the documentary film maker, Rose Rosenblatt. Their daughter, Julia, graduates Bowdoin College this May. She was a great basketball player on a great basketball team.