Warren Casey Papers

Warren Casey, at times an author, lyricist, composer and actor, is best known as co-author with Jim Jacobs of the hit musical Grease. A native of Yonkers, N.Y., Casey attended Syracuse University, where he earned a degree in fine arts. He later taught in New York high schools. Casey moved to Chicago in the early 1960s, where he became heavily involved in the local theater scene. He met Jim Jacobs in 1963, while acting with the Chicago Stage Guild. The two began writing Grease, a parody about high school in the 1950s, in 1970, after Casey had been fired from a job as a lingerie salesman and purchased a typewriter in preparation for a job as an advertising copywriter. The musical premiered at the Kingston Mines Theatre in Chicago in 1971. Grease moved to New York in a slightly altered form in 1972, where it earned Tony nominations and became the longest-running Broadway show of its time. In 1978 a film version of Grease was produced starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. This was followed by a less successful film sequel, Grease 2, in 1982.

In addition to his work with the Chicago Stage Guild and his work on Grease, Casey was involved in various ways with a number of Chicago theaters and independent writing projects. He was on the original artistic board of the Victory Gardens Theater, and created the role of Bernie in the 1974 Organic Theater premier of David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago. He and Jacobs also collaborated on a musical entitled Island of the Lost Co-Eds, which was produced by Columbia College in 1981. One of his final, and unfinished, projects included a collaboration on a musical with Brazilian performer Valucha de Castro. Casey died of complications of AIDS on November 8, 1988, at the age of 53.