eceased Classmate: 1973 Roderick McLucas
Date Of Birth:
Date Deceased:
Age at Death:
Cause of Death: heart attack
Classmate City:
Classmate State:
Classmate Country: USA
Was a Veteran: No
Survived By:

RODERICK K. McLUCAS – 1955-2013 REVISED SERVICE INFORMATION LISTED BELOW Family and friends will gather at 1:30 pm on Saturday, April 5 at the McLucas Cemetery in Clio to inter the ashes of Roderick Knapp McLucas. He died in February, 2013 of an apparent heart attack at his home at 307 West 71st Street in New York. He was 57. The son of the late Dr. John L. McLucas, originally of Latta, S.C.. and Patricia Knapp McLucas, McLucas was born in Pennsylvania and grew up in Washington, D.C., Paris, France, and Concord, Massachusetts. He entered Wesleyan University in Connecticut with the class of 1977 and graduated from Columbia in 1985 with a B.A. in French Literature. In 2001 he received a MFA from CUNY/Brooklyn College in Theatre and Directing. He had an extensive career in the New York theatre as actor, director, producer, writer and translator for the stage, and teacher. His particular interests included innovative approaches to classic French and English repertory. For several years he was playwright in residence at the Jean Cocteau Repertory company in New York, translating and/or directing works of Molière, Beaumarchais, Shakespeare, and others. He was the founder and Producing Artistic Director of the Colossal Theatre Company, and Co-founder and Executive Director of Grace Repertory. His directing credits also included Hamlet and King Lear; translations which he successfully staged included Tartuffe, The Hypochondriac, The Bourgeois Gentleman, and Fuente Ovehuna. He performed his acclaimed one-man play Jawbone in New York and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. He taught acting and directed student productions for several years at Marymount Manhattan College; he also gave numerous lectures, workshops, and master classes at colleges throughout the United States and in Kiev, Ukraine. His students experienced his teaching as dynamic, passionate, supportive, and challenging. More recently he also worked in the Verbatim Reporting Service at the United Nations. He is survived by sisters Pamela McL. Byers of San Francisco and Susan McLucas of Boston, brother John C. McLucas of Baltimore, brother-in-law Jeff Byers, niece Katherine McL. Byers, and many cousins. He also leaves an extraordinarily broad circle of devoted friends and colleagues. Though his 1984 marriage to Margaret Tucker Ackroyd ended in divorce, the two remained close friends. The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the World Wildlife Fund.