Background
Drivas was born Robert Choromokos in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Hariklia (née Cunningham-Wright) and James Peter Choromokos.
Drivas was born Robert Choromokos in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Hariklia (née Cunningham-Wright) and James Peter Choromokos.
Drivas studied at the University of Chicago and the University of Miami with further training at the Greek Playhouse in Athens, Greece.
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).