John Belluso
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John Belluso (13 November 1969 – 10 February 2006) was an American playwright best known for his works focussing on the lives of disabled people. He also directed a writing program for disabled people.
Belluso was born in Warwick, Rhode Island. He began using a wheelchair at the age of 13 due to a bone disease called Engleman-Camurdrie syndrome. He completed a bachelor's and master's degree at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Dramatic Writing program.
In 2001, he wrote The Body of Bourne, based on the life of Randolph Bourne, a World War I pacifist and author. It was produced in Los Angeles by the Mark Taper Forum. He also directed the Forum's Other Voices program for writers with a disability.
He followed that play in 2002 with Pyretown, which criticises America's managed care health system through a romance between a divorced mother and a young, wheelchair-using man.
His other works include:
- Gretty Good Time, about a 32-year-old disabled woman living in a nursing home;
- Travelling Skin, about a waitress with cerebral palsy; and
- Henry Flamethrowa, about a comatose woman who is believed to cause miracles.
He died in February 2006 in New York City, where he was writing a play for New York's Public Theater about a disabled veteran returning from Iraq. In March, 2008, this play, "The Poor Itch," was directed by his friend Lisa Peterson as an unfinished work in the Public's "Lab" series.
Series 1, episode 17, of Ghost Whisperer is dedicated to his memory.
