Tina Howe Dies: ‘Painting Churches’, ‘Coastal Disturbances’ Playwright Was 85
deadline.comTina Howe, the celebrated playwright whose works included the oft-staged Painting Churches and Coastal Disturbances, died yesterday of natural causes after a short illness due to complications from a hip fracture sustained in a recent fall.
The two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist was 85. Her death was announced by her longtime agent Patrick Herold. A New York City native, Howe attended Sarah Lawrence College, Teacher’s College at Columbia University and Chicago Teachers College and studied philosophy at Sorbonne University in Paris before her mainstream stage breakthrough in 1981 with the production of Painting Churches at Second Stage Off Broadway.
Set in the Beacon Hill area of Boston, the play, about the relationship between an artist and her aging parents, was a major success, winning an Obie Award, moving to Broadway in 1983 and becoming a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Howe had actually made her professional New York stage debut 11 years prior to Painting Churches, with an Off Broadway production of The Nest, but it was Painting Churches that secured her place among her generation’s most successful dramatists.
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