Victor Bumbalo papers

1969-2013

Born in Utica, New York, in 1942, Victor Bumbalo has written extensively for theatre, television, and film. He received his master's degree in theatre from Bennington College in 1967, where he studied under Bernard Malamud. Immediately after graduating, Bumbalo moved with his husband Tom to New York City, where he established himself as a director and writer in the Off- and Off-Off Broadway theatre community in New York City. During the summers of 1968 to 1970, he served as artistic director of the noted Soul and Latin Theatre (SALT) in Harlem. By the late 1970s, Bumbalo began particularly focusing his playwriting on the lives of gay men, their friends, lovers, and families. Several of his works were produced by John Glines' theatre company, including Kitchen Duty and Niagara Falls Bumbalo's other major plays include Show What are Tuesdays Like?, Questa, and Adam and the Experts. During the 1980s and early 1990s, Bumbalo was also very active as a team leader with the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) organization in New York City, and HIV/AIDS figures in many of his plays from this period. Bumbalo's plays have been consistently produced across the United States and internationally and most have been published.

In recognition of his body of work, Bumbalo received the Ingram Merrill Award for Playwriting in 1987, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in 2006 for Questa and again in 2007 for Niagara Falls. During the 1980s, Bumbalo was also awarded two residences at the McDowell Colony and one at Yaddo. In honor of his friend and fellow playwright, in 1993 Bumbalo established the Robert Chesley/VictorBumbalo Foundation to support residencies for emerging LGBT playwrights at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico.

In 1995, Bumbalo moved to Los Angeles to focus on writing for television, most notably for David Milch's NYPD Blue and for CBS's American Gothic, as well as HBO's Spawn and ABC's Relativity. Bumbalo also wrote several movies of the week that were produced by major networks. With Dan Lauria, who appeared in Questa, he co-authored the screenplay, Book of Joe. He also wrote for Nickelodeon and for 20th Century Fox Animation. Bumbalo was also the writer, director, and producer of the 2010 short film Two Boys, which won recognition at several film festivals. He is currently working on new theatrical pieces and is a practicing Buddhist Dharma teacher.