Fort Logan National Cemetery

Richard and the Crow loom large in my legend, as the saying goes. His aesthetic and approach to making theatre coloured my own and had a huge impact on the work Lorree and I did in New York.  

The dedication and creativity he brought to the work was - and remains - an inspiration.  And the warmth and welcome of the Crow and the Bells 'droppeth as  the gentle rain from heaven ... It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.'  (To quote from Merchant of Venice, my first show with the Crow).  I was truly  and surely blessed  to know Richard, to work with him, and to learn from him.

Alas dear Richard – I knew him.

The news of Richard's passing brought a flood of memories.  My first year with The Upstart Crow, the company produced what, NINE shows – ridiculous!  We were young, energetic, and connected by our passion and joy for creating theatre together, with Richard at the helm.

On and off over the next fifteen years, I was involved in the Crow and enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with Richard.  I learned so much from him, and was grateful to be considered a colleague.  His breath and depth of knowledge, which he shared so generously, was foundational to who I was as a theatre artist.  He greatly influenced my life – and I will never forget him.  Thank you, Richard. 

Sending love and hugs to Jo, Viv and Alexis, and the entire family – Lorree True

Richard Bell was born Richard Orville Beliel on June 30, 1933 in Shanghai, China. His father, Clarence Alton Beliel, had been a United States Marine stationed in China who, after his enlistment terminated, took a position as a journalist with the English language Shanghai Evening Post. His mother, Elena Michaelovna Fingerut was a Russian refugee, a Menshevik whose family had opposed the Bolshevik government and fled the Russian revolution.
	In 1939 the China-Japan war had broken out and the Beliel family moved to Manila where his father continued as a journalist, but now as a radio commentator at the NBC station in Manila, and he became the NBC bureau chief in the far East. To appeal to the upper class Spanish speakers in Manila he took the name Don Bell for his broadcasts. (Don was a title, not a name.)
	Manila was bombed by the Japanese on the same night as the Pearl Harbor bombing. The family continued to live in their home in Manila for a couple of months until his parents were interned the the Santo Tomas Internment Camp. The children, Richard and his brother Clarence, were interned in a nunnery; the Convent of the Holy Ghost. A few months later Holy Ghost was closed by the Japanese, and Richard and Clarence were moved to join their parents at Santo Tomas.
	In February 1945 the First Cavalry Division of the United States Army liberated Manila. That summer the Beliels moved to their father’s home town; Hutchinson, Kansas.
	In the late ‘40s Richard moved among a few cities following his father as he worked radio stations in Hutchinson, in New York City, and in Silver Springs, Maryland. He graduated from Hutchinson High School in 1951. He and his brother had, by this time, legally changed their last name from Beliel to Bell.
	He had been active in the theatre program in his high school and at Hutchinson Junior College and did some theatre work at community theatres and college programs in the early ‘50s. Not being regularly enrolled in any college program he lost his student draft deferment. In the summer of 1953 he was attending The University of Colorado and acting in its summer Shakespeare production. That year he was drafted and spent most of the next two years serving in the First Logistical Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He continued his theatre work there, at the community theater program, the Fort Bragg Players. He was discharged in 1955 and returned to CU Boulder and earned a BA in Speech and Drama there in 1959.
	In his senior year at the University of Colorado he married Mary Elizabeth Herndon. They had a daughter, Vivian Elizabeth, now Vivian Elizabeth Sutherland. They were divorced in 1973.
	He began his graduate work in theatre at Ohio University, Athens, where he received his MFA in theatre in 1962 and went on to teach at Southern Illinois University at St. Louis and Edwardsville. There he was the theatre department’s technical director. His first two years at SIU were spent directing plays and building sets in the old building that had been East St. Louis High School. In 1964 SIU moved to a new campus in Edwardsville, Illinois, where he divided his teaching time between the theatre department and the English department. In his last year at SIU he moved back to East St. Louis as a senior lecturer at the university’s Experiment in Higher Education, a program that involved 100 students who had graduated high school with good grades but were denied admission to at least five universities. Ninety-five of the 100 students were Black. Two years later all those students were admitted to universities as juniors.
	In 1969 he resigned from SIU to pursue graduate studies in English at Washington University. In his last year there he was the holder of a Shubert Fellowship in playwriting.
	That year he took a position as an instructor in the Fine Arts department at California State College in Bakersfield. He taught literature and drama there.
	He resigned from teaching in 1974 and returned to Boulder and tried (unsuccessfully) to earn a living as a free-lance playwright. That summer he directed a staged reading of The Two Noble Kinsmen at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.
	He continued his theatre at the Nomad Playhouse in the early ‘70s. In 1975 he met Joan Lee Kuder when they acted together in The Dybbuk. In 1977 they married and their daughter, Alexis Teresa was born in 1978.
	In 1980 Richard and Jo created The Upstart Crow Theatre Company and they acted, directed, or designed virtually all its shows until 2018 when both retired from the company
	In 1994 Richard took a temporary job at McGuckin Hardware; a job he held for twenty-one years.
	In 1979 Richard and Joan wrote and published Auditions and Scenes from Shakespeare, a directory of some 700 scenes and audition pieces from Shakespeare’s plays. In 2018 Richard completed Speak the Speech, a Shakespearean glossary designed for actors rather than readers.
	Richard O. Bell is survived by: his wife of 47 years, Joan Kuder Bell; his previous wife, Mary Herndon Bell; his daughters, Alexis Teresa Bell and Vivian Elizabeth Sutherland (Dan Gary Sutherland III) and grand-daughters Elizabeth Amber Sutherland (Luigi Pasquale Capra) and their daughters Lillia Hope Estrada and Izabella Abigail Larson as well as his second grand-daughter Miranda Elyena Sutherland and her two daughters, Noelle Elyena Luketu and Kali Vivian Rose Lee.
	In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Richard’s name to The Upstart Crow theatre company, PO Box 18045, Boulder CO 80308.
	Richard’s memorial service will be held at 10:30 AM on Monday, September 16th at Fort Logan National Cemetery. It will be a short military service. If you have any questions, please contact VLM Customer Support at 1-866-245-1490 or vlm@va.gov.


RICHARD ORVILLE BELL

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