Tony Azito

Tony Azito (July 18, 1948 – May 26, 1995) was an American eccentric dancer and character actor. During his career, he was best known for comic and grotesque parts, which were accentuated by his lanky, hyperextended body.

Azito was part of Juilliard's "Group I," the first students admitted to the drama program administered by John Houseman. His fellow students included Patti LuPone and Kevin Kline. Soon after arriving, Azito fell under the influence of choreographer Anna Sokolow and began studying modern dance — although, at six-foot-three (190 cm), Azito was an unusual candidate for dance training. (There was another dancer in the family: Azito's younger brother, Arturo Azito, performed with Eliot Feld and the Boston Ballet.)

This newfound interest in dance aggravated Houseman, who was apparently anxious about the number of gay men in Group I and had already clashed with Azito over a cross-dressing incident. Partly as a result of his conflict with Houseman, Azito left Juilliard without taking a degree and, as "Antonio Azito," spent two years performing in Sokolow's company.

Returning to drama in the mid-1970s, Azito began working in avant-garde off- and off-off-Broadway theater, including Cotton Club Gala, Bebop, The Life and Times of Toulouse-Lautrec, and C.O.R.F.A.X. He quickly became associated with the director Wilford Leach, who would be one of Azito's most frequent employers until Leach's own death. He made his Broadway debut in Richard Foreman's controversial revival of The Threepenny Opera, in a dancing role ("Samuel") invented just for him. Critics were intrigued by what soon became known as Azito's signature: a dancing style that made him look like a somewhat off-kilter marionette, accompanied by stylized facial expressions. An interviewer once described him as "a bit like Buster Keaton injected with Silly Putty." This production also inaugurated Azito's association with Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival, which continued with another Brecht-Weill musical, Happy End (1977).

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