Freddie Herko
The Fountain Theatre is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in the amount of $10,000 to support the creation, development and presentation of Freddie, an original new play utilizing a collaborative fusion of music, video, dance and drama. The world premiere project created by Fountain Co-Artistic Director Deborah Lawlor will be a thrilling hybrid of performance and video art forms to tell the unforgettable true story of Frederick Herko, the young avant garde dancer who galvanized audiences and those who knew him in New York’s East Village during the turbulent 1960’s.
Andy Warhol
A dazzling storm of charisma, beauty and artistic passion, Herko was a brilliant 28 year-old dancer of extraordinary talent haunted by dark self-destructive demons. A fiery denizen of Andy Warhol’s Factory and the experimental scene in Greenwich Village, Herko became more eccentric, unpredictable and self-destructive. In 1964, while dancing in his apartment to Mozart’s Coronation Mass, Herko leapt out the window and fell to his death five stories down. Created by Deborah Lawlor, who was a close friend of Herko in the final year of his life, the project chronicles the blazing comet of the Icarus-like Freddie and the explosive creative energy of the 1960’s. By fusing theatre, music, dance and video collage, the project will capture the explosive spirit of a passionate artist and a turbulent era.
Freddie Herko
Deborah Lawlor
The biography of Freddie Herko is currently being researched and written by Gerard Forde, a friend of Deborah Lawlor. Forde is now hosting a screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York of Andy Warhol films featuring Herko.
The world premiere of Deborah Lawlor’s exciting Freddie project will be presented at the Fountain in 2015.
