Warren Casey (April 20, 1935 – November 8, 1988) was an American

theater Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actor, actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The p ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

lyricist A lyricist is a songwriter who writes lyrics (the spoken words), as opposed to a composer, who writes the song's music which may include but not limited to the melody, harmony, arrangement and accompaniment. Royalties A lyricist's income ...

writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, travelogues, p ...

, and

actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...

. He was the writer and composer, with

Jim Jacobs Jim Jacobs (born October 7, 1942) is an American actor, composer, lyricist, and writer for the theatre, long associated with the Chicago theater scene. Jacobs is best known for creating the book, storyline, characters, lyrics for the 1971 musi ...

, of the stage musical '' Grease''.

Career

Warren Casey was born on April 20, 1935, in

Yonkers, New York Yonkers () is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. Developed along the Hudson River, it is the third most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City and Buffalo. The population of Yonkers was 211,569 as enu ...

to Peter L. Casey, a steamfitter, and Signe (née Ginman) Casey, a nurse. He graduated from Gorton High School, Yonkers, NY class of 1952. Casey received his Fine Arts Degree from the

Syracuse University Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU) is a Private university, private research university in Syracuse, New York. Established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the university has been nonsectarian since 1920. Locate ...

School of Visual and Performing Arts in 1957.Warren Casey biography, The Estate Project
web.archive.org, retrieved January 26, 2010

''Grease''

In the mid-1960s, Casey met

while acting with the Chicago Stage Guild, and the two began collaborating on a play with music about high-school life during the golden age of

rock 'n' roll Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock 'n' roll, or rock 'n roll) is a genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It originated from African-American music such as jazz, rhythm an ...

in the 1950s. Entitled ''Grease'', it premiered in 1971 at the Kingston Mines Theater, one of the pioneering companies of Chicago's off-Loop theater movement, in the Lincoln Park section of Chicago. Producers

Ken Waissman Kenneth Waissman (born January 1940) is an American theatre producer. Waissman's first Broadway credit was the 1971 Paul Zindel play '' And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little'' with Estelle Parsons and Julie Harris. The following year, while he and ...

and

Maxine Fox Maxine may refer to: People Maxine is a feminine given name. * Maxine Andrews (1916–1995), member of The Andrews Sisters singing trio * Maxine Audley (1923–1992), English actress * Maxine Brown (country singer) (1932-2019), American country ...

saw the show and suggested to the playwrights that it might work better as a

musical Musical is the adjective of music. Musical may also refer to: * Musical theatre, a performance art that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance * Musical film and television, a genre of film and television that incorporates into the narr ...

, and told them if the creative partners were willing to rework it and they liked the end result, they would produce it

off-Broadway An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...

. Casey quit his day job as a department store lingerie buyer and the team headed to New York City to collaborate on what would become '' Grease'', which opened at the

Eden Theatre Village East by Angelika (originally the Louis N. Jaffe Art Theatre, also Village East, and formerly known by several other names) is a movie theater at 189 Second Avenue, on the corner with 12th Street, in the East Village of Manhattan in N ...

in downtown

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, moved to

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

, and earned him a

Tony Award The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Award, recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual cer ...

nomination for Best Book of a Musical. The show went on to become a West End hit, a hugely successful film, and a staple of regional theatre,

summer stock In American theater, summer-stock theater is a theater that presents stage productions only in the summer. The name combines the season with the tradition of staging shows by a resident company, reusing stock scenery and costumes. Summer stock the ...

community theatre Community theatre refers to any theatrical performance made in relation to particular communities—its usage includes theatre made by, with, and for a community. It may refer to a production that is made entirely by a community with no outside he ...

, and high school drama groups.

Later career

Casey's acting credits include the original production of

David Mamet David Alan Mamet (; born November 30, 1947) is an American playwright, filmmaker, and author. He won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony Award, Tony nominations for his plays ''Glengarry Glen Ross'' (1984) and ''Speed-the-Plow'' (1988). He first ...

's ''

Sexual Perversity in Chicago ''Sexual Perversity in Chicago'' is a play written by David Mamet that examines the sex lives of two men and two women in the 1970s. The play is filled with profanity and regional jargon that reflects the working-class language of Chicago. The c ...

'' in 1974 at the Organic Theater Company. Under Stuart Gordon's direction, Casey created the role of foul-mouthed self-styled makeout artist Bernie Litko, delivering a comically outrageous performance tinged with pathos. In the same year he fronted $1,000 to help start

Victory Gardens Theater Victory Gardens Theater is a theater company in Chicago, Illinois dedicated to the development and production of new plays and playwrights. The theater company was founded in 1974 when eight Chicago artists, Cecil O'Neal, Warren Casey, Stuart Go ...

in Chicago. In 1976, he wrote ''Mudgett''. He wrote (with

) ''Island of Lost Coeds'', a two-act musical, produced at Columbia College Chicago under the direction of Sheldon Patinkin. He also contributed

incidental music Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, or some other presentation form that is not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as t ...

to ''

Twelfth Night ''Twelfth Night'', or ''What You Will'' is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written around 1601–1602 as a Twelfth Night's entertainment for the close of the Christmas season. The play centres on the twins Vio ...

'' in 1976 and new lyrics to ''

June Moon ''June Moon'' is a play by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner. Based on the Lardner short story "Some Like Them Cold," about a love affair that loses steam before it ever gets started, it includes songs with words and music by Lardner but is not ...

'' in 1977. In addition, Casey worked in the musical ''

Cats The cat (''Felis catus'') is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from the wild members of t ...

''.

Personal life

Casey died of

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...

-related complications in Chicago at the age of 53.Williams, Albert (January 9, 2009)
The Jim and Warren Show
Chicago Reader. Retrieved on March 16, 2009. At the time of his death he was writing a musical with the

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

ian performer

Valucha deCastro Valucha deCastro (October 9, 1930 – February 12, 2007) was a Brazilian-born singer, songwriter and artist. Born in Brazil's Minas Gerais state, she grew up in Rio de Janeiro.A Remembrance at greasethemusical.co.ukBiography and Papers at Chicago Public Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Casey, Warren American male composers American male stage actors American LGBT dramatists and playwrights American LGBT songwriters American gay actors American gay writers American gay musicians Gay composers Gay dramatists and playwrights Gay songwriters American musical theatre lyricists AIDS-related deaths in Illinois People from Yonkers, New York 1935 births 1988 deaths 20th-century American male actors 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights American male dramatists and playwrights 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American composers 20th-century American male musicians 20th-century LGBT people