John Glines, Tony Winning Producer and Playwright, Passes Away

BroadwayWorld is saddened to report the passing of John Glines, a Tony winning producer and playwright. His husband, Chaowarat Chiewvej, posted on John's Facebook page that he passed away at 4am today (Wednesday) in Bangkok.

Glines won a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award in 1983 as producer of Torch Song Trilogy. He won the Drama Desk Award and received a Tony nomination in 1985 as producer of As Is, and won the Drama Desk Award in 1994 for Whoop-Dee-Doo!

Glines was a founding trustee of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, which grew out of Stamp Out AIDS, the non-profit organization he founded in 1985 as a result of his work on As Is.

Watch Glines' acceptance speech for his Tony Award for Torch Song Trilogy below:

Glines established The Glines in 1976, an Off-Off-Broadway theater company that specialized in producing plays about the gay experience. The John Glines papers (1971-1998) were donated to Yale in 2002, and they consist of scripts, most of which were produced by The Glines, and a small amount of related material such as fliers, press releases, contact sheets, and lead sheets for songs.

His play In The Desert Of My Soul was anthologized in Best Short Plays Of 1976. His musical Gulp!, written with Stephen Greco and Robin Jones, ran Off-Off-Broadway in 1977.

Other plays written for The Glines included On Tina Tuna Walk, In Her Own Words (A Biography of Jane Chambers), Men Of Manhattan (which was made into a film directed by Anthony Marsellis), Chicken Delight, Body And Soulm Murder In Disguise, Key West, and Heavenly Days. His last play, Butterflies And Tigers, based on stories of the Chinese people during the Cultural Revolution, ran in New York City in 1998.

In addition to his work in theatre, Glines also worked as a writer for children's television, including Captain Kangaroo and Sesame Street.