Jeff Bennett, founder of Bare Bones Theater, dead at 81

Jeff Bennett, a Northport acting teacher and theater-company founder whose name graces an auditorium at the high school where he taught for 19 years, died Thursday at Stony Brook University Hospital following a fall at home the day before. He was 81.

The cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage, said his wife of 29 years, Sherri Bennett.

A high school music and drama teacher for three decades before founding Northport’s Bare Bones Theater Company in the early 2000s, Jeff Bennett mentored generations of professional and avocation actors. His company and its 75-seat theater at the Posey School pushed envelopes to mount provocative plays and at least two world premieres.

He had spent 12 years as a drama coach at Wantagh High School before transferring to Shoreham-Wading River High School in 1978. There the Jeffrey Bennett Auditorium was christened when he retired in 1997. A fellow Shoreham teacher once recalled that some parents objected to students studying mature works like David Mamet plays and “Talk Radio” by Eric Bogosian, but that “because of the way Mr. Bennett trusted kids and the way they trusted him,” students “flocked to the theater program.”

“I’ve met people over the years who were students at his high schools and they would still come to the shows just to see Jeff and his work,” said Frank Zinghini, who worked closely with Bennett since Bare Bones’ first productions, and chaired the nonprofit corporation under which it functioned.

“He attracted a community of wonderful people around him, all pulled into his orbit because of his warmth, his heart, his spirit,” Zinghini, a Northport native who now lives in Centerport, told Newsday. “He gave so much of himself in everything, and you wanted to give as much of yourself to match.”

“He was very well-loved by everybody,” said Northport’s JoAnn Katz, who served as the theater company’s managing director for a time. “And he doted on everybody in the Bare Bones family, which is how we all considered it.”

“Jeff was one of the most observant and knowledgeable men I've ever met,” added actor, director and choreographer Jacqueline Muro of Old Field and Boynton Beach, Florida. “He was compassionate and humble, and said such profound and wonderful things about theater and his actors."

Following his retirement from high school teaching, Bennett taught an adult-education acting course at Northport’s Laurel Avenue School (now the William J. Brosnan School). After a few years and a few blocks’ move to a space at the Posey School of Dance, he formed Bare Bones Theater Company. Its first production, in August 2004, was the omnibus “Nightmares and Daymares,” consisting of the one-act plays “The Zoo Story” by Edward Albee, “Hotline” by Elaine May and “The Actor’s Nightmare” by Christopher Durang — an adventuresome lineup for suburban theater.

Until the company closed in 2018, Bare Bones would produce a spectrum of plays, from such popular hits as Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers” to the Long Island premieres of edgy works by Tracy Letts, Stephen Adly Guirgis and David Lindsay-Abaire. 

Bare Bones also produced the world premieres of Danielle Burby’s “Hooked” in 2014 and Frederick Stroppel's two one-act plays under the umbrella title “Dead Of Night” in 2016. In 2013, Bare Bones was among the producers of John S. Anastasi's limited-run play “I Forgive You, Ronald Reagan” at Off-Broadway's Samuel Beckett Theatre.

In 2001, the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt imprint Heinemann published Bennett’s book “Secondary Stages: Revitalizing High School Theatre.”

Bennett was born in Queens on May 30, 1942. His family moved to Long Island, where he graduated from East Meadow High School in 1960 and went on to study theater at Queens College, CUNY.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his stepson, Aron Lewis, of Northport, and his daughter, Laurey Bennett Levy of Los Angeles; brothers Lance Bennett, of Manhattan, and Scott Bennett, of Fort Lauderdale; sister Lisa Futterman, River Vale, New Jersey; and two grandchildren, Hannah Levy and Maura Levy.

Services will be private. The Northport One-Act Play Festival in September will be dedicated to him.