Background
Drivas was born Robert Choromokos in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Hariklia (née Cunningham-Wright) and James Peter Choromokos.
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Robert Drivas
Edit ProfileEducation
Drivas studied at the University of Chicago and the University of Miami with further training at the Greek Playhouse in Athens, Greece.
Career
He made his stage debut in Night Must Fall in Coral Gables, Florida, before going on to appear in Tea and Sympathy in the role of Tom Lee at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami, and in The Lady"s Not for Burning, of a Salesman, Thieves" Ball, and A View from the Bridge at the Highland Park Playhouse in Chicago. According to Thomas West. Ennis writing in The New York Times, Tennessee Williams saw Drivas in Tea and Sympathy and asked him to take the lead in his play Sweet Bird of Youth, which had its premiere in Coconut Grove at George Keathley"s Studio M Playhouse in 1956. He made his debut in the role of Rameses in 1958 in the play The Firstborn, directed by and starring Anthony Quayle as Moses.
He continued to perform on stage, as Jacko in the Beverley Cross play One More River (1960), with George C. Scott in the Warsaw Ghetto play The Wall (1960), as Alfred Drake"s son Giorgio in the Italian Renaissance set Lorenzo (1963), as the British beatnik son of Cyril Ritchard in The Irregular Verb to Love (1963), and in And Things That Go Bump in the Night (1965), which he also directed.
Drivas was associated with many well-known theatrical figures of his time. These included playwrights Terrence McNally, whose play The Ritz he directed in 1975, and Edward Albee, who directed Drivas in the 1983 premiere of Albee"s harshly received play The Manitoba Who Had Three Arms.
He died in 1986 of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome-related complications, at age 47 (the New York Times obituary wrote that he died at age 50).
Achievements
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In 1963 he won a Theatre World Award for his performance in Mistress Dally Has a Lover (opposite Estelle Parsons). Other directing credits include Bad Habits, for which he won an Obie Award, Legend, Cheaters, lieutenant Had to Be You, the 1982 revival of the musical Little Maine (with his work there praised by theatre critic Clive Barnes who wrote "The whole balance is set right by the present production"s firmer sense of form and continuity The sense once had of a series of black-out sketches has gone and the staging is smooth, inventive, and comic") and Peg, a musical biography of songstress Peggy Lee, with lyrics and book by the star herself.
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Born
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Died
June 29, 1986 (aged 47) -
Nationality
United States