John C. Russell papers (Ms. 2009.017)

Biographical note

John Charles Russell wrote the play “Stupid Kids,” which opened Off-Broadway in 1998, four years after his death at age 31 from AIDS. The play established Russell as a playwright of great unfulfilled promise, part of a vibrant New York City cultural scene that was critically diminished by the HIV epidemic of the ‘80’s and ‘90’s.

Russell grew up in Long Island, New York, graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio and earned his M.F.A. from Brown’s Graduate Writing Program in 1991. At Brown he studied with Paula Vogel and Edmund White. While in Vogel’s workshop and during summer fellowships at the MacDowell Colony he worked on “Stupid Kids,” as well as “Mother Clapp’s Molly House” (his thesis), “Gay ‘90’s: A Pop Song Trilogy,” ”Dante and Virgil Go Dancing,” and “A Gun, a Book, a Photograph, a Name.” He also wrote for Andy’s Summer Playhouse, a New Hampshire children’s theater that continues to offer the John C. Russell Playwrights’ and Directors’ Labs. His plays have been read and produced by the Joseph Papp Public Theater, BACA Downtown in Brooklyn, and Company One Theatre in Hartford. Russell was a member of New Dramatists, Circle Repertory’s Playwrights Project and the New Works Project.

John C. Russell died on April 23, 1994, in New York City.