Bradford Louryk

Who is Bradford Louryk?

Bradford Louryk is a multi-award winning American theater artist and actor. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania and educated at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, he is best known for his collaboratively generated solo performance work, which often incorporates multimedia elements and gender reversal in the exploration of its subject matter. This, along with the "intellectual and linguistic complexity" of his work, has led to comparison to Charles Ludlam and Charles Busch, though Louryk has historically received consistent praise for his portrayals of male characters, as well. He is also known for his deeply entrenched and quirky sense of style: "Louryk, tall, dark and handsome in his boho black clothes and colourful bandana - has, at 26, been voted one of New York's most eligible bachelors."

Beginning in July, 2005, Louryk garnered international critical acclaim for Christine Jorgensen Reveals, a painstaking recreation of a circa 1958 long-form recorded interview with Christine Jorgensen, one of the first American recipients of gender reassignment surgery, in which "both performers lip-synch, with uncanny precision, to the actual recording... at the same time providing visual counterpart to every phoneme, snort, scratch, or hesitation." Following its critically heralded New York premiere, Christine Jorgensen Reveals played to great acclaim in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the Festival Fringe; in Boston, Massachusetts, at the Boston Center for the Arts; and in Dublin, Ireland, at The Project Arts Centre. In 2006, at the age of 28, Louryk was subsequently nominated for and awarded the prestigious Drama Desk Award in the category Unique Theatrical Experience, the same category in which Robert Wilson was also nominated. In America, the production also received a GLAAD Media Award nomination for Best Off-Broadway Play, in addition to awards and nominations in Dublin and Boston.