Obituary: Edward Kinchley Evans Jr. / Playwright, theater company co-founder
Share with others:
Edward Kinchley Evans Jr., a playwright and co-founder of the former Acting Company theater in Lawrenceville, died of natural causes Sunday at his home in Emlenton, Venango County. He was 82.
Mr. Evans and his partner, Glen Gress, moved to Pittsburgh in 1985 to set up the Laurel Highlands Regional Theatre, first in Oakland and then at a former church in Lawrenceville. Before retiring in 1996, Mr. Evans was the resident playwright for the former theater troupe, which they renamed the Acting Company.
The theater "was a kind of a gateway for so many of us young performers who walked through the door at some time or another," actress and independent film producer Adrienne Wehr said.
"Eddie and Glen spent a lot of time in New York before they moved to Pennsylvania, and they brought the sensitivity of the East Village to this region. It was theater fare not on any other stages in the area."
Mr. Evans was born in 1925 in Sylvania, Ga., and served 22 months in World War II as a military policeman. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in fine arts from Columbia University in New York City, and was a featured playwright with the Village South Theatre and the playwright-in-residence at Carriage House Experimental Theatre in Huntingdon, Huntingdon County.
Mr. Evans and Mr. Gress met in 1954 and opened a design studio together, the pair told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in a 1996 interview. They would often make the costumes for Acting Company productions, said Ms. Wehr, of Regent Square.
The theater company closed in 1998, two years after Mr. Evans and Mr. Gress retired.
The pair moved to Emlenton, 30 miles northeast of Butler, in 1993. Mr. Gress, the artistic director of the Acting Company, died in 2003.
Mr. Evans is survived by a son, Peter, of New York; a daughter, Elaine Kondracki, of New York; and a brother, Curtis Yeomans, of Tybee Island, Ga.
A private service will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow at H. Jack Buzard Funeral Home in Eau Claire, Butler County.
First Published August 14, 2007 9:31 pm
