Theater Breaking Through Barriers Artistic Director Ike Schambelan Dies at 75

According to The New York Times, Ike Schambelan, artistic director of Theater Breaking Through Barriers for more than three decades, died Tuesday, February 3, 2015, due to cancer. He was 75.

Schambelan championed disabled actors through his company, which he founded after directing readings of radio plays for the vision-impaired in 1979. He began working with blind and other disabled performers in community workshops and eventually created Theater by the Blind in 1980 (the name changed in 2008).

The company began producing full productions in 1985, including the original Sherlock Holmes mystery Murder in Baker Street, as well as works by Brecht, Agatha Christie, A.R. Gurney, Arthur Miller, Shakespeare, Shaw, Lanford Wilson, and more.

Although Schambelan was not blind himself, his blind grandmother inspired much of his work, along with Mark Medoff's Tony-winning play Children of a Lesser God, which features a deaf woman.

Schambelan has directed at the Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, The New Dramatists, Equity Library Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, the Pittsburgh Public Theater and the George Street Playhouse. He served as Artistic Director of the Touring/Children's Theatre at Long Wharf, the Woodstock Playhouse and the Austen Riggs Theatre. For five years he produced and directed radio and television commercials for Kenyon & Eckhardt Advertising, working on Ford, Macleans, Brylcreem and Nabisco. He earned his bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College and a Doctor of Fine Arts from the Yale School of Drama.

Theater Breaking Through Barriers' next production is The Unexpected Guest, opening this April and starring actors with a variety of disabilities.

Schambelan is survived by his wife, Joan Duddy, a twin brother, Howard, and another brother, Morrie.

Pictured: Ike in TBTB's SOME OF OUR PARTS in 2011. Photo by Carol Rosegg.