Ron Vawter (December 9, 1948 – April 16, 1994) was an American actor and a founding member of theexperimental theater companyThe Wooster Group. Vawter performed in most of the group's works until his death from aheart attack in 1994 at the age of 45.^[1]

Vawter was born inLatham, New York, to Matilda (Buttoni) and Elton Lee Vawter.^[2] As a founding member ofThe Wooster Group, directed by Elizabeth LeCompte at the Performing Garage in downtown New York, Vawter originated roles inRumstick Road, Nayatt School, Point Judith (an epilog), Route 1 & 9, Hula, L.S.D. (...Just the High Points...), Frank Dell's The Temptation of Saint Antony, North Atlantic,and Brace Up!. He appeared on video inFish Story, and in the Group's video piecesWhite Homeland Commandoand Flaubert Dreams of Travel but the Illness of His Mother Prevents It.

Vawter was a member ofThe Performance Group, from which The Wooster Group emerged in 1980. With The Performance Group, Vawter performed inMother Courage and Her Children (Bertolt Brecht),The Marilyn Project (David Gaard),Cops (Terry Curtis Fox), andThe Balcony (Jean Genet) -- all directed by Richard Schechner.

In addition to his work over 15 years at the Performing Garage, Vawter appeared in films, includingKing Blank,Philadelphia,The Silence of the Lambs, andSex, Lies, and Videotape, generally playingcharacter roles.^[3] He also performed in theatre pieces by Richard Foreman, Jeff Weiss, and Mabou Mines.

Vawter explored themes ofsexual identity in his 1992 work for the stage,Roy Cohn/Jack Smith, two linked monologues that contrast the characters of twogay men who died ofAIDS.^[1]The Jack Smith section was a re-creation of Smith's performance "What's Underground About Marshmallows?," and the Roy Cohn section was written byGary Indiana.^[4]It was directed by Greg Mehrten and created withClay Shirky andMarianne Weems. The piece was released as a film directed by Jill Godmilow in which the sections were intercut.^[5]

Vawter's last piece of work was considered his artistic testament: thePhiloktetes-variations, written byJohn Jesurun on Vatwer's request, and performed while the actor was dying ofHIV/AIDS. Based on the story aboutPhiloctetes—the ancient Greek warrior whose wound smelled so intolerably noxious that he was banished to the uninhabited island of Lemnos and abandoned by his comrades-in-arms on the way to Troy—it has consequently also become a metaphor forAIDS, with Philoktetes as a plagued outcast.

In director Jan Ritsema's triptych at the Brussels Kaaitheater in 1994, Vawter embodied Philoktetes in three forms, using his own body naked and covered with purpleKaposi rash. Through his visible being, he illuminated the connection between the performance's "here and now" and the story's "there and then," as well as between life and death, subject and object—as in his first audience address, when Vawter said that he was suffering from AIDS: "I am dying; I am on my way to the grave but am just doing this performance on the way."

Vawter was a graduate ofSiena College, where he performed in Little Theater productions. Vawter died of a heart attack on April 16, 1994, in-flight on a commercial plane from Zürich to New York. He was 45.

Ron Vawter's papers are held by theNew York Public Library for the Performing Arts.^[6]

• Ron Vawter atIMDb
• Ron Vawter papers, 1963-1994, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division,New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

• 1948 births
• 1994 deaths
• American male film actors
• American gay actors
• Siena College alumni
• 20th-century American male actors
• People from Latham, New York
• 20th-century American LGBTQ people

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